Temperament
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: By chance meeting a Sharran is rescued from a Beshaban prison by a Zhent. Viconia, Montaron, and Xzar team up to lurk in the shadows of Amn and spread misery wherever they go. Viconia/Montaron. Complete.
1. Torments

_Temperament_; or, _Common Temperament_; or, _Of Temperament, Torment, and the Transferral of Misery._

_Summary_: By chance meeting a Sharran is rescued from a Beshaban prison by a Zhent. Viconia, Montaron, and Xzar team up to lurk in the shadows of Amn and spread misery wherever they go. Viconia/Montaron.

_Warnings_: Violence, FF. Net-rating, some sexual content, unusual shipping, crude language, friendship speeches, evil characters being evil, cruelty to minors, loitering, lack of fluffy Zhentarim and Sharrans, deaths of humanoid and other entities, totally serious warnings for traumatising content of a couple of different forms. Nothing much you couldn't find in-game. I think it's organic to the story rather than purely gratuitous, though. Especially the bit in Chapter Seven. And the depressing one in Chapter Twelve. And the other depressing one in Chapter Sixteen. And Chapter Twenty-Two.

—

There were a lot would've envied him; fat lot any of them knew. Tem-_purr_-a-mental, she was, and would've told him off for not speaking proper if she'd been born to Common. Temperamental, never slow to pitching a fit and taking it out on anyone near (not so bad when it was the crazy mage who got the worst of the death threats), rarely what ye might call exactly a close relationship with the truth, particularly given what she thought of as close, liked playing games in the head to try and make it all dance to her tunes, blowing boiling and iceberg-freezing by turn and turnabout. But he'd seen plenty o' manipulations by fool lordlings in his time and he knew plots and plans, and he knew nothing stopped those who tried too much of the complicated stuff better than a sword stuck in the back. Watch the names who ended up dead rather than the tongue-flappings and ye'd know the rights of it. The only problem with shaking her words off like scraping a bit of guts off your armour was that she'd start yelling for not listening. Then a little something to make things up 'twixt them, sometimes.

In the house in Athkatla the metal saucepan ricocheted from his head. Caught him a good one, though he'd been in a helm. He reached right hand to blade. "Yer whining quits or ye do."

She held a carving-knife, glaring.

"_Rivvil iblith el nin vith'rell!_"

Swearing he could hear in most tongues; that and the directions to the nearest brothel suited most needs. A blade and gold talked anywhere.

"Perchance your humble halfling servant might cordially invite yer Ladyship to press her own damned pantaloons?" he mocked, and her aim with the knife was off simply from rage. That, and the balance of 'em wasn't right for throwing. "You're welcome to wash your own dishes if ye feel like ever filling that boneless elven rear of yours."

"_Alu vith natha rothe!_"

Go fuck— Ye could guess at the rest with any imagination. A ceramic platter in her hands now; had to be careful she'd not ruin every piece of crockery in the house. "Got one of 'em here now to fuck, right?"

He stepped back while the platter flew through the air, and saw it crash on the floor in front of his feet in sharp brown shards. "You _dare _call me a _cow_!"

"Ye said it first," he reminded; her eyes were darker than the stories said of drow, but managed to snap a tarnished crimson as one of those fool novels. Good, mebbe, to know what the word meant.

"_Vith'ir siffat sakphul! Vith'ir!_" This time it was a porcelain bowl patterned in blue flowers that the crazy mage had bought on a whim, and one of the shards flew into his cheek.

Then the drow saw that his crossbow had made its way to his hands. "Such a small _klez_ for a small man!"'

"Think you're faster?" Montaron taunted. The drow's right hand went to the holy symbol upon her neck.

"Shar could grant me the power to command you in an instant, small one!"

"Then why don't ye give it a try, doxy?" he sneered. Mebbe he shouldn't've let her stay after those fool Beshabans; the crazy mage wouldn't have objected either way.

"Because I show considerable restraint, fool!"

He snorted. Priests'd caught him creeping through their temple—shouldn't have taken the tip from that blasted Embarl. Then to the home-away-from-home of their private cells housed with an old annoyance; the Sharran'd made herself useful escaping after he'd broken the cell locks. He'd seen women more bloodthirsty than her in his time who'd rip your head off with bare hands or spellstrike even sooner than look at ye, whores more experienced at least in relative terms, and piss on knights and all their fool notions of chivalry: but he didn't get around to saying _Yer here on sufferance, bitch_.

The doorknob jiggled slowly and the spotty face of one of the mad mage's so-called apprentices leaned in. The drow backed down.

"Clean the floor, unnatural slave," she ordered, pointing; and the creature did so in a series of mechanical movements, taking down pan and broom methodically and with compliance.

"Must obey friends of the Master."

The drow leaned back on Montaron's shelf in a way that slid her hand dangerously close to the needle-trap he'd placed to guard one of his alcohol stashes. He didn't trouble to warn her.

"Your master, _sakphul_, at least knows how to maintain me in suitable style," Viconia said, lazily watching the apprentice clean for her. The face that looked uncannily like a human boy's was a claylike substance; the pair of them were creations of Xzar's as mad as anything else the mage did. Still, as long as his laboratory kept the corpse-snatcher quiet, Montaron had worked for worse.

Montaron barked a short laugh. "Ye think he'll support ye? Mad mage'd support an invisible butterfly in front of his face giving him orders from the King of the Handkerchief Thieves!"

She moved like a two-copper whore pretending to be a noble's courtesan. "Do you really think so, little man?" She was skinny as any other elf, not much on top by halfling's view, though she swayed her hips and waist to pretend her bust couldn't be outsized by a pair of pinheads. The apprentice didn't care.

Montaron cackled long and loud. "Yer worse than worthless as it stands," he said. "Ye could stay on your knees a month earning it back and still not make a paying proposition—"

"On my knees? Males would mine beljurils with bare fingernails for a mere glance from me. Only a _worm_ would be low enough for you, slave!—" She curled her hands to fists, angry, her glare dark as her symbol.

"For cleaning yer own messes'd only take you from cost to nothing," Montaron said, kicking in the apprentice's direction. "Nothing but listening to yer sawbones-voice moan and bellyache on—"

It was a bottle of really rather expensive whisky that smashed itself upon the tiles in front of him this time, and he let her wail all she liked to slowly heal herself from the needles embedded in her hand.

—

"Monty, I want you to spy on the Harpers in their red-brick house in the docks. No, I don't, because it's dangerous, but sadly one of their number has engineered their visibility to our headquarters—meaning that we have to do work," Xzar said. Miserably, he looked down at the test tube bubbling with an unidentifiable green substance in his left hand. "Do you know how far this will put me behind in my experiments? Days! I was so looking forward to working the acid secretions below the fingernails out of dissected comparisons of the goblins and the slimes...perhaps if I add mustard to the mix..." He shook the mixture, which foamed several inches higher. "Motion reagent! Back to the laboratory! ...Oh, Monty, maybe take the dark priestess with you? I think she's been here some days and hasn't gone home yet."

Blasted Harpers, Montaron thought; 'twasn't bad to be hanging around the mad wizard and getting paid for making sure he didn't kill himself in his latest scheme of necromantic research. But the Zhents called, and sometimes they even rewarded success.

"I won't be needing any kind of—" he began. Thieving was best done alone; he'd never been in a group operation that wasn't failed by one fool or another needing their throat slit, and still not a day went by where he didn't want the same to the mad wizard. Yet the drow got up from lazing on her arse in a soft armchair to answer.

"Have you not implied that Viconia does not earn her keep?" She slithered up to a standing position, folding her arms above her chest. "She will go with Shar in the night." Pretentious bloody aristocrats, speaking about themselves that way.

"Yes, the association of the night was exactly what I had in mind," Xzar said. "Monty thinks I'm conspicuous and I suppose he must be right on these matters—"

As if six-something of crazy tattooed necromancer with a belt of dead spell components wasn't noticeable by any with half a brain. About as noticeable as a drow in a human city full of folk who'd burn her soon as look at her...come to think of it, that had points.

"Yeah," Montaron said, "you're explicitly invited. Drow bitch."

"Necromancer, silence your pet ape before I slowly cut him into tiny little pieces."

—

Bloody Harpers. Montaron'd tracked the guard wanderings, sent his climbing line across from the roof of a civilian's house across the street to get on the roof. They used it as some kind of bower, green things growing in pots; he'd never liked anything to do with forestry. They didn't set guards up top far's his night vision could tell, and he could see as far in dark as in light. The drow was the same way, cloaked up in conjure-shadows; cheap trick from a goddess. He checked the line and took up the pulley. He swung across easy as a blink while downstairs the guard—no, he begged the Harpers' pardon, the coincidental set of tars who happened to wander in circles down about the place—wasn't even there at the moment to look. He waited for the drow to follow; or if she weren't brave enough, it wasn't his to care. Simple in-and-out burglary like he'd done a thousand times in the streets.

The window below was the best target he could see; actual glass, waste of money. He dropped down to the windowsill landing like a cat and set about fiddling open the lock. Complicated one, smell of mage-taint at it too; but nothing he'd not seen. The Grand Dukes had some worse. He'd managed to plunder Silvershield himself after a few things the nobleman's gullypated twittering brat'd let slip on the road. One of the reasons why the ungrateful Bhaalspawn kid'd let him and Xzar go before things got real rough. He got to his third lockpick, turning the pins; he could've cut through the glass and done it that way, but he'd the sense of a mage-alarm for that. Better fool it into thinking the key'd been slipped through. Then the pick slipped in his hands, strained and cracking, and he'd have sworn out loud if it wouldn't get him caught. The drow'd landed beside him, stepping out from the shadows as if she'd managed to hide for a special surprise, balanced catlike on the windowsill and crowding him out with her bulk.

If that pick was broken they were halfway done for. "Don't cursed—" Montaron began in a whisper.

"Did I shock you, little master of shadows?" she taunted, placing a hand against the glass; darkness spread from it.

"Get that fool trick away from it," Montaron ordered. Pick was intact. It'd tripped a pin he had to shift once more; cursed delays.

"But I have disabled the alarm," she said. Not trusting that, he finished the lockpicking despite her body in the way; and leaped softly down into the Harper room. Longlimbs built human-tall, as if they wanted to make it easy for him. The drow slipped in behind him, contorting herself to pass through. On the rich carpet lay a section upraised by a tenth of an inch he recognised for a trap. It was empty and quiet; he could hear no movement in here, and the drow had the common sense to shut the window behind them in case of overcurious harp-fingerers looking up. From the books on the shelves and mage-gear scattered on a table this was a library; about one in ten were in scripts he knew how to read.

"Ye like spreading misery everywhere ye go, drow?" Montaron said. He leaned down to fix that little trap with a long dagger's sticking.

"It is the will of the Goddess," she preened.

"Let them Harpers feel it," Montaron ordered. They wouldn't leave the important stuff lying out on the shelves; he fiddled with the lock of the table's drawers, eyeing it for traps. The drow tapped a foot in impatience; not audibly on the soft carpet, but he could see it and let her wait for as long as he needed. He weren't wanting them to stick around for the betterment of their health on some peaceful holiday in the Harper hold. Several scrolls he stuffed in his armour; let the mad mage make what he would of 'em. A Harp-seal for stamping he left where it was.

The furnishings kept up rich beyond the library. Painted walls and carpet laid still on the floors, an alcove or two with fancy jugs and vases set pretty. The damned Harp kept their lodgings drab-dipt more often than not, too priggy and priest-ridden for luxuries; there were lords of the Zhentarim who favoured the same virtues, too much dusty noble blood and long noses turned down on the trimmings and trinkets that made life for ordinary rogues. This was different. Montaron didn't like changes to expectation.

Harpers weren't wandering about here; living quarters must be downward. Montaron picked open a door to find a lot of old cloaks and cloth stored; swore under his breath for the delay.

"The _space_," the drow whispered, leaning against the wall; "a wider room as marked by walls. One of the Underdark knows how to map important rooms."

Broken clock had it right for a moment or two a day. Montaron knew his crow-laying better than the backs of his palms. He slipped picks to the lock of another door, and jerked back in shock at the cries of surprised birds. Green things grew to fill the room and a golden cage held pale flyers shifted out of their sleep—

If Harpers saw fit to afford some damned _aviary_ to stroll around in like some pampered nobleson, or if they'd their share of interfering vindictive druids here—

He closed the door to shut the birds up, pricking his ears for the sounds of someone woken; he'd put his hearing against a longlimb pointy-ear any day, far better than some human longlimb giving himself Harper airs. Seemed the stairs next; and he ought to be able to pick a front-door lock from the inside easily enough. Mebbe that first in preparation for an escape route if the drow saw them caught.

The carpet laid across the staircase was rich and thick and probably red in good light, Montaron thought in disgust; he stepped to its side in case of traps rooted below. That's what he'd try, set some horizontal spike below the softness to pop out into the foot when they didn't expect it, some good strong poison to finish man or halfling or drow—

She opened her mouth again for a few words in a language he didn't know, ignoring his kick to her shins to keep quiet; and glared down at him. "_Beware, little man_," Viconia whispered. "Shar shows me traps below that fine red; and I sense something cold in the air beyond." It worried him, but there weren't no choice he could see. He fixed the tangling brass lock in fancy marble doors pin by pin to coax it to open, and added oil to the hinges for good measure. They slipped calmly open with no sign of movement or observation.

Then he padded inside to a room where looked to be what he'd come for, polished desks and papers to nick for the mad wizard, valuables lying around and a small armoury of dweomered weapons, exactly what meant they didn't have to stay around here longer than good for his health and temper against her. He'd time to notice that there was a glimmering dagger or two sized right for hin hands before there were grey _shapes_ in the air with hands and harps. Sweet Black Hound, they were coming at him and stopping his breath and he hit thin air and couldn't touch them. The cursed drow raised her black circle and said words that weren't working to drive them back, damn her to all the layers of the Abyss, and one last time Montaron swept his sword right through the ghosts that acted like damned Harpers and killed him. The last he saw was the grey hands in his head, not hitting him but going in beyond his eyes, and then he saw nothing.

He woke with a headache like a year's worth of hangover hitting all at once, and the drow's voice talking, which scraped and scratched more pain out of him. Metal at his feet and wrists, chained to some splintered board rubbing against him; not a stitch of clothing or weapon or hidden lockpick left on him. He kept his eyes shut. Delay the Harper bastards. Keep an ear on what the backstabbing bitch of a drow said.

"—They _enslaved_ me," she said, artificial tears in her voice, "the loathsome necromancer and his halfling partner; I was to be executed for doing _nothing_ to those rivvin, simply the colour of my skin; and I had nowhere else to turn. Forced here on this night I shall tell you everything; for they took the gravest of advantages of me, inflicted the most lurid torments..."

"Then you had better continue to tell us everything, drow," spoke a man's voice. Montaron caught a quick hitch in the drow's breath, as if they'd the common sense to chain her up too. Ought to have chained her to the kitchen wall, have her scrub the floors to earn her meals—

"They are Zhents; the human is a mad necromancer; his two apprenti are flesh golems of a sort, part clay and part of his art; he breeds goblins, —eight, no, nine tanks of them as I recall, two a tank, in the large central room of his lower floor. Beyond these he has no living—no, forgive me, moving—defences."

"And his wards?" the man's speech asked leisurely.

"The password, as far as I remember, is _swordfish_. But is it not always so on the surface?" Viconia said. "What else do you wish to know? Allow Viconia to tell you everything; she is grateful to you for her release—" She let out a small gasp as if someone had pulled her back. "And ask _him_ of all the truth of what I have said! He has been awake and listening these past four minutes!"

Montaron woke and flung himself forward as far as he could, as if he could fix a dagger in her stoolpigeon throat. "Damn ye to all the Nine Hells for a traitor, bitch, may a million tanar'ri rut on your burning—" The chains didn't budge for him; and then the pommel of a dagger slammed into his jaw. Sparks flared in front of him but it wasn't enough to send him back to unconsciousness.

Five damned-bloody Harpers; the drow bitch was held back with her wrists tied and stretched out behind her by a burly human guard at her back, a shorter one watching her in front with a moon's head amulet raised up that made her cringe back from it. The leader a muscled human longlimb in a moon-and-stars robe flung over pyjamas, trying to look as if he was important; a hin-lass of Montaron's kind, in dark leathers and with blade and bow slung to her back, no sense of common kin in a scarred sneering face; a pointy-eared human in chain armour, some half-surface-elf like the druid bitch and her footstool bootlicker of a man. Fancy gold amulets were around each neck. Montaron saw damp wood walls behind them, chains and tool-shelves of things he knew the purposes for, smelt the mud and wine-cases of a cellar. They weren't going to let them out of here.

The half-elf walked up and brought down a hammer on Montaron's right hand. Broke the thumb; pride didn't matter to yell out and he cursed Viconia and the lot of them to the Abyss and beyond.

"Speak the truth, halfling," the chief longlimb said softly, holding a lamp, watching avidly as a hawk's eye as if he wanted to see all the torture. Harper and Zhent methods weren't different when you got down to it.

Weren't as if he cared to protect the mad mage, curses on his head and all of them, the drow'd done it already and he wouldn't bother to try to make as if she lied.

"—Go fuck a kobold!" Pain exploded like a lightning strike.

"I see a typical...half a man," the drow said, glancing down at the vulnerables. Get him out of here and he'd show a thing or two to the hin Harper bitch and her. He grit his teeth at the next blow and didn't give them the satisfaction of a shout. Making it slow—worse than Zhents—

Knew their business enough that they wouldn't let it go black before they wanted. He bred goblins. The password to his wards. The apprenti. No, truly don't know the Zhent plans. Want the Harpers gone and dead and an eye on that new guild in the streets. Cold water dumped over his head to keep him awake through a black eye that couldn't see anything and a broken nose; then poured it on his face through a cloth as if to drown him—never so quick. He knew pain; he screamed out what the drow had told.

"Enough," Montaron heard through ringing ears; bastard in the moon-and-stars. Watched from a distance, keeping his own hands clean; watched like he enjoyed it. "I think our halfling acquaintance has told us all he can. As has the drow."

Her wretched voice swept through the air. "Release me, then, male. You heard the _sakphul_ repeat my truth."

"You think that we would trust a drow? I know your people, creature." Longlimb; might have been drooling over her for all he spoke; and it didn't change a thing. Bitch ought to have known it, Montaron thought through the red haze on him. Where he wasn't freezing cold he burned. They'd called the name Galvarey. "Accommodate the lady, Chamsil."

Viconia swore and hissed against it, but there were sounds of metal clinking. Zhents'd have raped her for good measure; she could have the screwing she'd given him and be grateful for it. He bled; could feel it trickling down wrists and outer thighs. Enough, perhaps, for darkness to swarm him for a while.

He opened an eye. Hadn't been out long, far's he could tell. Bloody Harper amateurs. It was dark again and they'd chained the drow standing to the wall, her dress still on; she pulled at her wrists.

"Happy now?" Montaron grunted. Harpers, harpy—same difference. Right wrist blood-slicked against the metal, thumb already out of joint and fingers numb; he could slip through if he pulled it the right way. The back of his hand scraped against the wood of the table. He pulled on the arm.

"What would have been the point of allowing them to torture me? The easiest solution was to avoid such pain as yours," Viconia said triumphantly.

Yeah, funny thing was, he'd have changed places with her given half a chance. "Ye see how far it got ye."

"Surfacers are so stupid." She moved in her chains in the dark, kicking up with her feet. They'd left her boots on. "Do you really think that your hand would open the other locks, even after you grind the bones further?"

"I've picked worse in my damned sleep," Montaron said.

"As you wish," the drow said, shifting position. "You're surprisingly enduring, little man. I have broken slaves of your kind with far less."

"You're a treacherous backstabbing bitch." Hand slipped through; fresh pain. He'd been bluffing. Could move a little finger; pick a splinter of wood and just try to go on nerve— "Most hin ain't me." Yeah, no pipeweed and stuffing his stomach and listening to the kobold crap they served up as cursed clan wisdom. He'd never looked back to what might've been.

The drow kicked up again in her chains, and this time her booted foot hit the underside of his table.

"You see how our interests align, _sakphul_?" she said. "I will release you; you will release me; and then I may heal you."

Or she could release him and he'd slit her throat—Montaron toyed with that idea for a long, happy moment, then thought that two alone in a Harper hold needed it. Through the streets, she wouldn't try to get anything on him while they walked through, then if the mad wizard was still alive they could kill her the way she was asking for it.

"Deal, drow." Montaron spat part of a tooth out of his mouth. She flung her leg up in another kick and this time left a dent in the wood. Then the panels began to warp apart. He used it to stretch out the warped rotten table, splinter it where the iron was nailed to the wood. He dropped to the floor, numb and cursing. Left hand still moved; they'd stowed behind some of what they'd taken from him. Right pick for the job. The drow wasn't so much taller than him, elves short for longlimbs and drow even shorter; but he shifted a stool to work on her arms pinned high above her head and stretching her to her toes. If she'd end her damn nagging about it; he could have shoved the pick in her eye to shut her up.

"At _last_. You smell foul," she said. He got down from her, limping; first thing she did was grasp up her black disc where they'd left it. Then finally she cast her spell and things started to knit together again. Hands, welts, nose, burns, ribs—

"But curing _that_ bruising is not necessary to leave here, is it?"

"Shut up, drow." Cared more for skin than balls, at the given moment in time. She'd not done a proper job; like dark cold water poured behind his eyes that got him moving, nothing more. He forced down their cellar door. Dagger in hand—ripped-up thumbscrew. Viconia took up a heavy hammer.

Harper turned, waiting at the passage atop the steps. Montaron ran—muscles still aching, stop him from crying out, too slow for the man with the longsword sweeping down and fast enough to spit him. Then the Sharran's sharp cry brought the bloody Harper down and he quickly slit the throat. The drow panted as if it'd cost her, leaning against the wall. Below the blood was that glimmer of gold he'd seen round all their necks. Montaron cut through the links and took it up. Heavy weight, amberlike clear stone at the centre of it, a pretty thing. He put it slowly around his own neck.

"You waste time, _sakphul_!" Viconia whispered harshly. "Leave this place."

"Been thinking," Montaron said, kicking the corpse into a corner. "These things. And getting a bit of revenge before we do. Up for it, drow, or die here?"

He knew about the white things. Entered carefully, ready to run out; needing some good old-fashioned revenge was stronger for him than fear. Always had been. "Stick close, drow," he said. Her cold hand looped into the human-sized amulet, loose on his neck; he fiddled with it to make sure she couldn't turn it to garrotte. Into that elaborate room of the spectres; they approached, damn them—and turned away at the sight. He went to ripping through curtains and pages and piling into the fine marble fireplace in the corner of the room; tore down that fancy dagger to let it rip through the Harper mess. The drow finally understood it and reached up herself. Weren't near enough time; Montaron took a few to keep, wrapping them in part of a curtain he'd draped around his body. And in one desk an oil of burning, atop a few supplies for healing and hasting. What a pleasant surprise. Pour it on the stuff, splatter it around the room; then start a fire from tinder and let it take everything—

Galvarey had come down the steps, shouting and screaming, but by then the flames had erupted. They ran for it, out to a paned window, more fancy frosted glass; Montaron broke it and ignored the shards. Then it was to the cobbles safe as if they were a blanket, though the rough cold ground battered and bruised them. A Harper-watcher saw, and Montaron threw a knife he'd saved at her head—off-aimed but enough of a distraction, enough to fling themselves down below a fence to the lower part of the docks, to shadowed alleyways and turns all in the merry dawn comin' to Athkatla while a nicely burning house flared behind them.

"Drow, another healing spell," Montaron ordered.

—


	2. Travellers

"This is _bad_, Monty. This is _very_ bad." The mad wizard weren't much hurt; walls halfway down, shattered glass of experiments on the ground, rooftop and house ruined about him. The apprenti lay in burned claylike shapes on the ground covered by their robes. Broken bottles of the whisky stash, too. Montaron groaned. Haphazardly Xzar flung components and broken alembics into a pack. "I fought the bad Harpers off with magic! But there's too many of them. We have to flee. Why are you wearing a bedsheet, Monty?"

"It be curtains," Montaron snapped, then noticed that wasn't the point. He thrust the papers he'd stolen. "Here, mad wizard. Cost me a lot, but take 'em and read. Exactly what you wanted."

Xzar took them up with sudden interest, same as for any instruction-sheet on how to stuff and animate a corpse in some language nobody bothered to speak nowadays. "Manshoon—or rather an underling—may even be pleased. Very good, Monty. Harpers and their silly schemes—_they_ don't know who's the other guild, but I've visited the graveyard with my folding shovel and they haven't—rumours of Gorion the Harper's Bhaalspawn—the powerful arcane aura beyond the Promenade that's in fact nothing to do with us—secret code about the rabbits—et cetera—"

"Ye said, _little_ man?" Montaron let the curtain drop for his clothing here. Ye travelled light adventuring, only fools like the cack-brained addled ranger'd the strength to carry half an armoury on your back and enough clothes to please even the Silvershield brat; here he'd trousers and a padded jerkin that hadn't been lost in the fight. He limped across in nothing more than he'd been born in.

"I had your kind as slaves in the Underdark. It's simply a trick of proportion," the drow snapped. "Your limbs are short but your valueless parts are closer to human."

He made a hand gesture that she understood, for all she liked to spill her drow words everywhere she spoke as if she knew no Common to speak of.

"And besides, skill matters far more." For a moment she draped herself lazily against a half-gone wall while he fastened the trousers. The mad wizard, who'd ignored it as if he knew nothing, glanced at her.

"Couldn't you help with the packing, Miss DeVir?" Xzar said. "I'd like to think of us as one big happy family—Monty, you, the little apprenti cheerfully playing on the floor to violate the laws of man, nature, and deity alike..." He began to cast a spell. Pale fire spread from his hands to cover the bodies of the apprentices. "Can't risk the infernal Harpers finding out how I built them." The clay figures melted easily, turned into a single black gleaming puddle between them with the odd lump floating on its surface. Montaron reached for his second-best pigsticker of a blade, the metal sharp enough to outlast the iron crisis while the hilt was tarnished and commonplace.

"They did not even _try_ to take advantage of me," Viconia complained, smoothing her ruffled though undamaged dress. "The male Galvarey only looked down at the drow in his possession; I could have manipulated them with ease had they succumbed. Just as I have done before." The mad mage fiddled carefully with a melted lock on an oaken trunk; tried a spell; then signalled for Montaron to do the unfastening. "As if they were above me, and I somehow soiled."

"Ye get that way for sleeping with half the coast," Montaron agreed. Part of a stash of tools had been spilled in the wreckage; his best diamond-head pick was ruined. He shifted the lock with a few cuts, and then saw a small heap of coin in platinum, a few jewels thrown into the mix.

"Mad wizard? Where did ye summon or steal this lot?" he said.

"Oh, from a nice captain of the city guards called Sir Isaea who ordered some of my goblins and a couple of others. Monty, don't keep all of them yourself; I'll want some funding for my further researches."

"Ye forget which of us has the most know-how in coin," Montaron said, stuffing his pockets. Perhaps this venture weren't quite as damnfool as he'd thought it. He reached up to the remains of a shelf once his height.

"Well, what do _you_ have, Monty? You're a thief and you keep telling Miss DeVir she's a courtesan." Xzar fastened a bedroll with a strange-looking pin that glittered with unearthly light, tightened the flasks on his belt amidst various spell components that stank of gravedirt, and straightened ready for the road.

"_Mistress_ DeVir, or my lady DeVir, will do," the drow purred at the boy-wizard.

"I like the term, 'treacherous whore who sold us out to the Harpers', myself," Montaron said. He'd finally laid hands on a working crossbow, and turned to level it at her black heart. "It's a bit long, but longer than her death'll take.

"She spilled it all to 'em, Xzar, and she'll do it next time someone asks for details on our mission. I'd say kill her slow, but we don't have time for it."

"Call off your ape." Viconia glared down; and tried to get 'round Xzar by tugging down the neckline of her dress, showing a length of coal-grey flesh. Nothing they hadn't seen before with her lazing on her arse in the house.

The wizard looked worried. "Monty? What do you think? What did she do? Without you I just don't know what I'd do; if I'd lost you to those Harpers I couldn't think of anything for the mission..."

"They _tortured_ me," Viconia whined.

"They tortured me!" Montaron said. "You spilled it without any!"

"As if you would not have changed places if you had thought of it. As if you did not break from your vengeance against me for the sight of mere coin. A Sharran knows when to pursue darkness," the drow said.

"Torture hurts. I work with dead people; I don't go to those Cyricist parts; I don't have to go to the cellars of the Keep..." Xzar babbled. "The Harper druid, she wanted us dead, Monty, she was frightening! Harpers are the dragons with feet like rabbits, they're bad if they catch you. I only slice into skin after they're dead..."

"Surfacers are all amateurs at the art," Viconia said. "Were I holding the whip, the simple dagger, the burning brand; there is so much more that could have been done with the Harpers' tools, and far more with the specialised devices of the Underdark. And yet you endure ably, _sakphul_. It bodes well for your survival." She smiled falsely. "I am a priestess. Would you prefer to gain the vengeance of Shar, or her aid to deliver it to others?" For a moment she silenced her gob as if to let them think of it.

"Shar's one of the mean ones, Monty. She wants everything to be a black glass hole nowhere and everywhere," the mad wizard complained. "But one of the _scary_ mean ones—"

The drow grabbed him fast. "Cast your share of magic today, spell-worker? Helpless, I see. How useful." She stretched a black arm around his neck. The mad mage's body stiffened as if it'd turned to ice. He screamed; then his left hand was blue and he pushed sharp cold fingers into the drow's neck. She dropped to the ground nursing her throat.

"Don't touch me!" Xzar cried, and reached down on her to pat not the open flesh of her chest but where she'd kept pouches at the waist of her dress. The drow reached up for a newborn cully's uppercut to the base of the mad mage's jaw that still had him fall back to land on his tailbone. She stood. It was like watching a pair of toddlers going at it, skill-wise—both bloody useless.

"_Monty._" Xzar nursed his jaw. "She's useful if she learns not to grab people like that. Stop threatening the scary drow. And no touching me without warning."

Viconia rested a hand on an outthrust hip. "I could make you beg for a single brush of a finger, human. I could make both of you plead for a mere glance."

Xzar got up without looking at her. He reached into one of his own pouches, where coin clinked. "Why am I the only fiscally useful member of this partnership at the moment, Monty? Why, I would rather be rich in spleens and spare lungs.'"

Montaron reluctantly lowered the weapon and stored away the bolts. Right that they should be leaving with Harpers swarming like pondscum in a druid swamp. "Because ye got lucky. 'Least my thieving's better than the drow's favourite bed-position selling her body—lay back and gripe."

"And yours?" Viconia whirled a black cloak over her shoulders and scowled at its burned, torn edges. "I have no doubt it would be a second's worth of dribbling and congratulating yourself for lasting ten times your customary stamina, or of touching yourself while maggots writhe inside a corpse!"

A flask of water; a bit of drybread still intact for the road. "I bet ye'd trap yer cuntpipe with razorblades and clamp your knees together for something extra to whine about," Montaron said. She hissed at him.

"No, that sort of activity has never counted as _studying_ corpses," Xzar corrected, wagging a long forefinger as if lecturing her. "Truly, one's investigations into dead bodies can be carried far further with a rongeur scoop and a curette. And they should be dead maggots...spell components." Something rustled in one of the spell component pouches on his robes. He seemed to decide to ignore how they'd all tried to kill each other moments before. "Shall we depart on our great adventure, gentlemen and ladies? Flee the meddling Harpers! Send occasional reports to Manshoon! Off to find the dragons with feet like rabbits!"

—

"And the direction we'll go shall be..." The mad mage flung a pair of polished knucklebones in the air as if part of a divination circle. They looked human, and Montaron didn't know exactly where he'd got them from. He bent down and studied them carefully; the ink that marked them in unreadable dead runes was a dark brownish black. "That way! Into the forest!"

The fool almost skipped. They'd made it past the gate guards, who'd glared at an open mage but hadn't gone too far deep into the cloaked, gloved woman who claimed to be ill; Viconia let down the scarf she'd worn around her face.

"He does not have the least of ideas as to where to go, does he?" she said.

"Never has, never will," Montaron said, and smiled unpleasantly. "Made Athkatla too warm to hold ye, and now you're all alone in the wilderness with a couple of upstanding Zhentish citizens. I'd make ye cook us dinner if I weren't afraid of poison by undercooking and your uselessness, woman."

"Drow know their poisons, little man," Viconia said. "Many things may slay human or halfling, and harm not the drow; and many more cannot harm a priestess with the spell of antidote."

"Yeah, see? Madam Bloody Useless on this little camping trip. Can't cook, can't darn, cleaning plates ain't good enough for ye, can't even serve for Beshaban kindling," he reminded her. They'd have burned the drow for heresy; would've passed over a thief to the guards, after a while, and given him time and chance to escape on his own.

Viconia showed blindingly white teeth, including a few sharper than the others. "Is it that you feel I have shown insufficient gratitude, thief?" she asked.

"Xzar!" Montaron yelled at the fool mage-boy, getting too far ahead. Cursed longlegs, especially him. "Yer direction's Imnesvale." He'd the uncracked pate to know the surrounds, and he weren't tramping around in the blasted forest and singing to the trees for tendays at a time like some prissy elf. Imnesvale by the Umar Hills was the town nearest to what Xzar'd madly picked; as good as any for a passing-through with a bit of pickpocketing, plundering, and pillaging as asked for. "Take the left path." The mage gave a cheery wave and bent down to a small growth of daisies.

"_Ah_, I predicted you should lead us to civilisation," the drow gloated with a lusty sigh. "A bed and a bath, that is all I ask for at the end of the journey through these barbarian lands...feather-mattressed, I expect, goosedown, of a size to easily lie either way, freshly cleaned bedclothes, and a private pool with steaming hot water wide enough to submerge my hair. A few basic comforts for one of noble birth. After all, it is not as if you lack the coin for the best these peasants have to offer."

The mad mage screamed, and Montaron saw the gibberlings that had risen from the dark of the forest. He drew his crossbow and got his first bolt into the chest of the one that had grabbed Xzar's wrist with sharp teeth. It fell nicely and he grinned at even the distant bloodshed, then drew his sword and went for the thick of it. Killing always made him feel better. Even gibberlings.

The blue things went down one by one; his sword slid nice and sharp between their ribs like they were made of hot butter. He could've done with a buckler handy to fend off their wild stabs, but they fought about as well as the mad wizard. He slashed a blue neck deep and let the blood spray where it would, and then the next one came up for its physic. He sent it howling to the Nine Hells and stepped over its corpse.

The Sharran'd been chanting something, curse her bones; she finished and stretched out five fingers, and the same number of gibberlings lay on the ground giving their throats up for slitting. Montaron gave more attention to the two coming up behind him and the stench of the grease on them. There was a bite on his arm; he swore, and beat the gibberling into a tree hard enough to knock its brains out. His sword caused enough blood to feed a blade well and he pierced the creature down past the collarbone. There was another going for the mad wizard; he cursed the fool alike and leapt to plunge the blade straight through its back. Blood soaked up to his elbows. The drow had a second chant, and he couldn't trust her not to stab them all in the back. She stood near the wizard, just bright enough to realise her place in a fight, and then the dead gibberling rose up at her priest's command. There'd been almost a herd of the creatures fool enough to attack them and the dead gibberling strode back into place. Montaron ripped his sword easily through the neck of one in a good enough arc to send two to the Black Dog in one blow.

The mad mage started to cackle. Montaron ignored him and waded through gore even as the surviving gibberlings tried to gather together. More fool they. "Oh, you've a clever hand with the undead, lady priestess! Divine cheating, I call it," Xzar said. He scrabbled on the ground for a gibberling body. "Let me show you the arcane methods!"

He cast. He crushed the gibberling's head in his hand and twisted it off the body with magic. Flesh and brains dripped off the skull to leave it stripped white.

"Monty, get down!" the mad wizard howled like a banshee. Montaron gave a last vindictive stab and flung himself to the ground. Ye trusted Xzar's word when the fool mage started yelling about explosions brewing. The gibberling skull flew through the air to the centre of the gathered critters. Then all was dark for a moment; fragments of bone flew like crossbow bolts as the skull imploded. The gibberlings screamed and died and above them for an aftershock was the black-dusted image of a skull in the air.

Xzar wiped the dust off his hands as Montaron kicked spitefully at a gibberling legbone and scraped a bloodied arm across his face to wipe away the black dust gathered there. "Perfectly destructive," the boy-mage said, eyes glinting. "With a human it's even better." He laughed wildly and too long; in a second or two he'd killed all that were left. Montaron gave another kick to a dismembered part.

"Reasonably...effective," drawled the drow, eyeing the carnage. "But they are so small. Not unlike _goln_. We should hunt larger prey."

—

Instead of anything commonplace, large and with a lot of bleeding to do, a black shadow shifted through the night. At first he'd thought it was part of the woods, trees bending in different ways in the dark while wind flapped ice-cold through them. But Montaron knew shadows and how they moved, and spotted it for weirdling-cruft. The sliver of the Moon-whore's tears was up; the town supposed to be not far off.

"Wizard." He jerked a finger in the last he'd seen. Blasted thing had vanished again; he'd have no peace until he found out what. He reached for the crossbow and cursed Beshaba's luck for only plain bolts. "What have ye gone and done now?"

"—and pierce the liver with eight copper wires and a lightning bolt..." Xzar shook his head and looked down. "No, Mummy, it wasn't me! What is it, Monty? I like the dark. Such a good time to pay visits to graveyards and silver ghosts."

"Take a look, fool," Montaron said. At the edge of his eyes the cursed thing flew again between the trees, but Maid of Misrule damn him if he'd say he saw a thing in the dark and couldn't the mage just fix it.

"_Veldrin_. Darkness; concealment; signs of my dark lady." Viconia flung back her hood merrily. "Come to me, my _dalharil_, my daughter. You are mine; you must be of the Mistress of the Night."

Blasted be all gods! Montaron looked again. Give him a proper target to aim at, flesh and blood to sink a blade deep through. "Mage, light," he ordered. It moved too quick. The wizard threw a skull carelessly in the air and said a few words of arcane-fiddling; and their clearing was lit by sickly green out of eyesockets and gaping jaw. Montaron's bolt hit into the darkness almost the instant the spellslinging was done.

The shadow—animal-like, blurred and clawed—leapt unharmed for his throat. He flung down the crossbow and went for his blade. What he pierced wasn't a throat but something colder than the Harpers' cursed spirits. He swore to Mask and ran out from under it, leading it to the drow. For all it was shadowed cold teeth bit through his shoulder and he felt himself bleed. Plain steel did nothing to it.

"...It does not obey," Viconia said, weak-sounding. The mage chanted and quick green spheres melted into the darkness that flung itself on the drow next. Black claws sank into her and made her bleed red. She screamed like a dying tomcat. Montaron reached for flints, slowly. A stick from the ground; wrestling clumsy fingers into place, curse everything that crazy mages and drow priestesses messed with. Xzar hit the thing again and it made a noise like broken glass pieces tumbling together.

At last the fire burned the sharpened wood Montaron held. He flung himself on its back for revenge, show who was toughest here; it was the moment after one of the mage's blows and he shoved the fire into the crevice left by the magic. This time it went deep in, shivering away from the light.

Montaron grinned even as the claws went for him again, and then stuffed the contents of a flask of cooking oil by his lit wood. The fires burnt the drow near as much as the shadow-creature, but it howled and she fled to a tree to hide; and with a last shout of magic from the necromancer the thing all but melted away.

"Follow it to the shadow-world!" Xzar cheered, pulling up robes above his ankles. Montaron caught him by the knee and threatened to stab him. His breath came short and he knew something'd been done to him; like a curse. He'd rather he had the thing still here to make it shed blood, or whatever it shed. Bugger mageries.

Viconia slowly pulled herself to her feet. "Not Shar's. For once you speak sense, mad rivvil. Find and interrogate it; hunt it down and discover..."

"No, hunt down the inn," Montaron snapped, ready to drop his weapons as if he'd had all the blood drained from him, limp and useless as a eunuch gnome. Wouldn't show it until he was indoors with lamp and candle and salt sprinkled on the lintels; ye were eaten alive by the vultures or worse at the sign of slipping. "Wade into a herd of shadows by moonlight if ye so feel like it, but I'll not be pulling fools from their own cess! We reach Imnesvale. Grab torches, the pair of you."

Xzar made a clap-handed job of a Zhentilar's salute. "Aye-aye, Capt'n Montaron! Somewhere warm and comfy with bunny slippers." Viconia complied, silent; she stepped lead-slow, near to clumsy as if the same thing'd been done to her. They'd leave her lying in the woods if she fell and couldn't move.

Imnesvale below the Umar Hills would've been a one-horse town if they hadn't boiled the old nag for soup long ago. Wind blew through hollows and cracks in the log walls; the paths were dirt-packed and empty in the dark. Hens—the winged sort—complained not far from them as if they'd woken 'em up. Viconia ducked inside her cloak to hide her drow skin.

Tavern had more lights than the other places; Montaron flung himself up to grab the iron knocker.

"Travellers looking for a place to spend coin," he said, playing on greed; "adventurers looking for a chance to earn it," he added. They'd know of the shadows in their woods, blasted things sending cold into the bones and about to make him drop the weapons. The flickering flame between the cracks made him hope the full town weren't the property of the shadow-things; in case of unfriendly reception he gripped the dagger with the special paste he'd spread on it from the last of the supplies the Harper raid'd left. He stopped himself from shaking like an old granny whining about the cold.

Human longlimbs stood in the place, ale flowing and fires burning. Merchant stock lay piled up by tables, one of books and one of weaponry; might as well keep the mad wizard from the first.

"Pair of rooms," Montaron ordered sharply, flicking three gold danters and a bloodstone ring across the table; it'd impress a town like this well enough. He'd stop the ache in his bones, tie down the mad wizard for a night of undisturbed sleep and bar the door from the inside.

"She's my...daughter!" Xzar invented, patting Viconia's shoulder below the cloak. Montaron cursed himself for not finding a better excuse for the creepy-looking figure in the dark cloak. Far too old to be the mad mage's kid no matter what the Keep'd done to him. "Self-esteem issues," he said. What in the Nine Hells—never mind. Montaron scowled up at the girl waiting and saw her jump back.

"We've got...one. Sorry, sir, it's a small place..." she babbled.

"And fetch hot water to it," Viconia ordered, flinging coin about from her own gloved hands. "Do not delay; I require a bath. Make sure the room is clean and I shall not give consequences for your poor planning to crowd this...establishment." She looked down at the straw-covered stones at their feet; that it wasn't a dirt floor was luxury enough for a place like this, Montaron thought. She'd learn far better, or get herself burned for a witch again. It was a happy thought, like lying on a bed and sleeping it off.

"Don't let the mad wizard run loose," he told her. Two longlimb beds and one straw-tick of a mattress on the floor. He lay down without bothering to get off his armour.

"Why must I do it?" Viconia whined, as if she were tired the same way. Xzar's laughter echoed in his ears and turned his sleep to shadowed nightmares.

—


	3. Imnesvale Shadows

The black things ate him feet-upward. They'd no mouths, only shadows and acid that turned his skin black as burned coal, darker than drow and into one of their own. Ate him inside out and the night fell for good. Shadows dancing around some broken stone under the ground forever like the Underdark the Sharran flapped her lips about. Soaked in the marrow of his bones like tar pitch charring his insides. He was too tired to give way to fear of it or even to groan it out.

Then sunlight shone in bright through the window and he opened his eyes as if ten stone giants had been using his head for a bowling game all night and sitting on it.

"_Drow!_" He sat up and drew his crossbow. The pair of idiots hadn't taken it from him, Mask's favours. "They did something that stayed. Heal it on me, curse you!"

"You won't know if I slay you or cure you," Viconia said. She looked stronger; black circle in her right hand, white hair damp and stringy on her shoulders. "Shar revealed all to me in my midnight prayer, for all I was weak enough to almost dare to forsake the ritual."

"Then she fell asleep in the bathwater barrel all night," Xzar offered helpfully, "and she's lying, dark Shar wasn't especially helpful." He rubbed his hands together, green sparks flying between them.

"Silence, heretic. The shadows drain; the difficult and exhausting restoration prayer overcomes it. For which the priest deserves high compensation," Viconia said.

"Lay it on me." Montaron levelled the bolt up. She'd need his muscle-backing; didn't need to give the ear to the gibberling crap spewing from her gums. She hesitated, giving a few more epithets, then started to call out the name of her goddess.

It was dark, same as the shadows themselves; but got rid of what they'd left under his skin, took away the cursed lingering weakness to make him fighting-fit again. No shadows moved without something to guide 'em; kill it and squeeze this town of every last copper for the favour. He stood up as the drow fell to her knees. She rubbed at her reddened eyes.

"It weakens the caster in exchange," Viconia said. "Males, go to the town matron or whatever it is called and present yourselves as willing mercenaries. They are shadows that belong not to Shar; she would they were restored." She sneezed, rubbed at her nose, and flung herself dramatically as a cheap actress down on her bed and drew covers and cloak thickly around her. "And fetch me something to eat while you're there; I need sustenance. Even this peasant town should supply one or two necessities. Mulled wine, a vintage no later than twelve-eighty if it must be human; warm almond milk; three cuts of roast surface-_rothe_ from the thigh, rare; two bunches of grapes; white bread cooked with lightly fried egg—still white, mind; a baked, plucked young hen; creamed herring with oysters; boiled egg stuffed with cheese and new peas; baked hazelnuts wrapped in fresh cuts of good bacon; pickled onions with ginger in light pastry; plum rissoles; fresh fig pie; bean tart; two pears in wine and spices; a bowl of clear mushroom soup with strong seasoning; ...and a large turnip salad." She sneezed again.

"Still haven't got a priest cure for commoner's cold?" Montaron said.

"_Do what I have said, rivvil!_" She flung one of her boots out of the cavern of covers in reasonably good aim.

—

"Sunlight's still blazing. Time to haul your arse out of the covers while it lasts," Montaron said. The grim spectre of the bone-picked remains of two scrawny chickens and pickled cabbage rinds lay on the scratched pewter tray in front of her in bed; Viconia DeVir the noble drow held a drumstick in one hand and a lump of brown bread in the other, a mug of warm tea steaming beside her. She ripped off the white flesh of the ex-rooster between her teeth.

"You know not the _xund_ of the casting, its cost," she said, and gulped down a mouthful of tea to wash the meat down.

"The-darkness-drains-life-and-lodges-in-bones-and-so-the-divine-caster-has-to-take-the-weakness-on-themselves," Xzar recited. "_Normal_ necromantic spells use what's there, but the divine casters just can't think of a better way to cure draining! Nor can their _sources_." He held a history book under his arm and a scroll he'd made Montaron filch from the local Cowlie, who'd given instructions like they were Amnish slaves.

"Revolting blasphemer. _El maglust lu' jivvilmin_: you deserve to die alone in pain caused by the Lady of Night." Tea-stained crumbs flew around the drow's face. Xzar was the type to stand on the top of a mountain in a lightning storm with a metal staff in hand explaining to Talos Stormlord why he shouldn't exist. "What did the matron—the male matron, I suppose, primitive rivvil—say to you?" Viconia said.

"Mayor hired us," Montaron said. "Rumours are that it's some crazy old lady called the Umar Witch—"

Xzar produced another book from his robes. "Umar Witch Project, by Hythir Donnhew. Dear Diary, I just want to apologise to Joshan's mother, and Mykeal's mother, and my mother. I am so sorry! Because it was my fault. I was the one who brought them after the Umar Witch. I was the one that said, 'keep going north'. I was the one who said that we were not lost. It was my project. I am so scared! I don't know what's out there but there was cackling out there in the woods..."

Viconia stared. "And how did this female come to scribe all this at extremity?"

"That's what the rabbits _want_ you to believe," Xzar said. Montaron ignored him, because he'd had much the same thought about a bard wasting time scribbling if they were supposed to be so near death. Come to think of it, the pair of bards with the Bhaalspawn were both that annoying, joining the brat to squabble over the flat-chested Silvershield sap without a thimbleful of common sense in her brain.

"Cowlie says there's an escaped murderer's cabin up in the woods and perhaps he killed the local ranger," Montaron said. "But he's no hand-waver. I say we find him first so he don't decide we've shady motives coming up from Athkatla."

"Shar forbid," Viconia pronounced piously and much becrumbedly.

"Get moving, drow."

—

She groused in daylight; they tramped north-east through blasted bloody forest that the normal sort of pointy-ear would have relished, but fortunately for them they didn't have any such hindrances in their way. Then the rotten-meat stench of dead men reached them on the air, and they found some of the shadow's kills.

'Twas only orcs and the like, not the human or two that'd been taken missing from Imnesvale. Montaron kicked the body of an eight-foot ogre, then rifled the pouches for gold. A pair of silver pieces and a piece of bone wrapped in some field-grasses. There were claw-marks in the body that glinted dark, and they'd not bled much. He couldn't see rhyme nor rhythm to the pattern of bodies strewn about the clearing; a kobold and a goblin and pair of thick-bodied orcs and the ogre. Trails beyond them as if one or two more'd been dragged off. He spotted one piece of battle-insignia: a Sythillian device. They'd made a camp from wood with bones of roast squirrel on the fire, and a rough latrine that had the drow grimace. As if she didn't have bodily needs, same as all who walked the earth; and she still sniffled and whined of her exhaustion.

"Claws," the necromancer said, bent closely over an orc. "Shaped like..." He sketched in the dirt; the ninnyhammer did that plenty of times with no meaning, but Montaron troubled to look. A set of four claws, medium-close together. It reminded him...of scratches he'd come by on the Sword Coast below old Ulcaster. Worgs and vampire-wolves with red eyes and iced-over breath.

"Wolf," Montaron said. There'd been some tale of the Bhaalspawn and werewolves over the Beard, but that had been afterward. He looked again at the old bones. "Large ones." Bigger they were, more blood and guts as they fell. Shadow-wolves. It didn't make him feel any better about freak witcheries. "We could drag a head or two back to the village and make out we nobly earned our pay." The marks were mostly on the orc-kin's bodies; chop off the heads and none in the pissant village'd be bright enough to know the corpses were old. Like he'd have known it himself if not for the mad mage's babbling on.

"No, Monty. Can't get away so easily as that! It's _interesting_," Xzar said. "Necromantic research ho! Walk faster, Miss DeVir."

The ranger cabin lay peacefully in the centre of a clearing with honeysuckle vines wound in a golden sweet-smelling mass around it, cheery bluebirds perched on ash trees twined together, and wild lavender growing purple and green by its wooden walls. Montaron hated the sight of it. The old blood spatters on the path, though, improved the setting considerably. There were snakelike lines in the dirt track vanishing into the long grass as if something had been dragged out of there. Something roughly human-sized.

Trail vanished some way in the grass; they went inside the place to spot the marks of a battle. A shattered iron longsword lay broken on the dirt floor. A longbow had been soaked from above by a leak in the roof, tangled and useless. Shelves and crockery were ruined as if the drow'd thrown one of her tantrums and scratches stained the wall, more blood spilled there.

"One month or so past," the necromancer said, fiddling with the stains. "The blood's human. The shadow-wolves don't leave much behind."

"They took her alive," Viconia said, posed with an outthrust part-bare thigh against the wall, her hood rolled down. "They left the _eroln_ dead; they dragged the female through the woods. She could have lost this much blood and still lived, at least for some small time." Her tongue crept lightly along her lips. "What do you think they did with her, necromancer?"

"Living flesh can be fed on for a very long time, if proper care is taken," Xzar said. "Take ghouls, for instance; there's nothing a ghoul loves more than the taste of soft, sweet mortal flesh. A lot of them tend to have gastronomical preferences for elves or gnomes for delicacies. The cheeks and haunches especially, I believe... But ghouls continue to exist even if they're starved; it's only a craving. Other creatures, however, will turn inert without sustenance from vital energies. The vampiric form of parasite cannot exist sans a source of life to bite from...or to rip the throat into tiny little pieces so you can't even use the trachea for a scarf.

"The sad thing is that most undead simply don't have impulse control. And then there's wraiths, who can want all sorts of things—souls or fear or blood or milk teeth or the second layer of flayed skin. Insubstantial and also able to survive without it; but aren't the living only around to be tormented for fun, or spell components, or boredom or instinct?"

The drow laughed triumphantly. "True enough, surfacer."

"There be no purpose to this," Montaron said. He'd gone to all the trouble of prying open the metal strongbox the ranger kept below her bed only to find a few coppers and a scribed letter from her mother. "Listen, drow; and hear it again, mad mage. Corthala's the name of the escaped killer from Athkatla."

"Cowled Wizards I don't like," Xzar contributed. "Who sets limits on magery? It doesn't matter if the quest for the great unknown has to be off other people's spleens. Why set limits on research? I'd like to slice through the marrow of their bones and stick it in a blender with weevil spit—"

"And a pair of half-elf adventurers who haven't trotted back in a fiveday," Montaron said. "Specifically, a druid bitch wearing the pants and a bootlicking stutterer trailing on her leash."

"_Harpers_," Xzar hissed.

"_Travelled_ with Benrulon some time. Kindly and gently cooperated with us on our noble quest to free Nashkel mines," Montaron said.

The drow nodded. "I heard of them. I could be quite comfortable with vengeance against those of that order." She smiled wide as a lanternfish's ragged jaws, the sort dangling sickly green light in black water to fetch prey into the sharp teeth.

"Part two of this comes when Corthala's either killed 'em hisself—or they've started to feel terribly sorry for the poor soul fleeing the Cowlies. Wouldn't trust their Amnish word for a copper even with the metal between your own teeth. Worst coming's that we get to fight all three. So bend your pointy ears, drow, and bend 'em good..."

—

The Harper Jaheira was a healer, and her husband Khalid a stuttering coward waving a longsword about. Stop the healer, and let her pansy man wilt for the loss of his leash. It hadn't worked as planned, but they were feeding the daisies they liked so much now.

Xzar held Corthala's corpse up by the hair; sliced through the throat; and walked inside the cabin to stick the bleeding head like a paperweight on the parchment-strewn table.

_Cursed Harpers won't trouble us again._ Montaron brushed at the bruise on his sword arm that'd been a bone-deep cut a minute or two before. No sense in tidying the bodies outside: murderer Corthala killed them all, and that's the story he'd tell to the Bhaalspawn brat if he ever crossed paths with them a second time.

"Shar, feed their souls to your greater glory," Viconia pronounced. "I thank you for your grace in providing me with a company who are not as witless as they seem." Her red glance caught Montaron's eyes. "You exploited their weaknesses, _lotha sakphul_. The drow would praise this."

They'd gotten in with chitchat of Benrulon, the half-hin book-raised brat supposed to be in Athkatla these days. Then the damn Harpers grew suspicious; the drow got shadows around him and her both so's he could get one good stab in from behind. In the half-elf bitch's leathers under her ribs. He'd made it the perfect shot to her kidneys and left her bleeding on the grass.

Then the man'd gone wild into it while his woman lay chanting to herself, and there he'd note to himself that his boasts to the drow'd gone wrong. The stuttering pansy'd gone furious and coming on fast, slicing like a crazy barbarian berserker so he couldn't duck under the blade for a good stab to the kneecaps. But Xzar had conjured up enough goblins for a distraction, and gotten brief enough a moment of sanity to make one of 'em slit the Harper bitch's throat. Montaron would've liked the kill himself, but he weren't dim enough to object. _J-j-j-jaheira!_ were her hubby's last stutter, so short of bardsong-heroic it almost made him laugh. Then the mad mage messed with fireballs and wraithspells with the drow holding Corthala in place—and then they'd all gone dead. He'd spat into the Harper's staring green eyes and wished it'd taken longer for the snotty tart to die.

Valygar Corthala's head held down a map the mad wizard studied, staining it with blood from its neck.

"Umar Hills. Werewolf cave. Dwarven camp remains. Haven't finished exploring the north part." Xzar picked up the head again, holding the paperweight close to his face. "Foul magic, you think, Lord Corthala? Foul magic? Come back and have a nice long _chat_ about it!"

Dark clouds of smoke fizzled into the cabin. Montaron kept his hands on his blade in case of the wrong thing summoned up. And then the head's eyes opened, blank like eggs rolling around in the skull.

"Valygar Corthala, slayer of necromancers!" Xzar said. "Where are the shadows in the Umar Hills? Tell the last thing you saw on your death!"

Beyond the bare windows of Corthala's cottage, below the thick branches of trees that blocked sunllight, a black line too tall for a bird rushed past.

—


	4. Glass and Honey

"No, you can't have it."

"Monty, please!"

"We're handing it to the Cowlie and it's shutting up."

"But we were having so much _fun_ together!"

The severed head of Valygar Corthala groaned in Montaron's bag. He couldn't tell if its speech was the mad mage's delusions—zombies did _anything_ you told them to, Xzar said, which was the sort of thing to make the sane salute the pavings with last night's dinner—or if he'd genuinely brought some part of the poor bastard's soul back from the Nine Hells. He wouldn't ask.

"Eyes ahead for shadows, mage."

"Oh, all _right_. Can I have him for dessert if I'm good?"

"No."

There wasn't any wind here. He wouldn't know oak from ivy, forests were things you stepped through fast as you could on the way between cities. Xzar hailed from the Keep and Viconia where no trees grew; those two hardly knew how to stop themselves walking in circles. But Montaron could see well enough that the tree leaves looked like thornbushes, the earth underfoot crunched darkly as if it was frost though no signs of ice broke on it, and for all he looked up to check the sun was still in the middle—they'd waited the night by fires in the Corthala cabin, and seen nothing—it looked dark as if the sky were evening, or an eclipse had come. If he'd cut into wood with his pocketknife he thought he might find nothing but dry death, like.

"Ain't normal," he said aloud. The drow looked into Corthala's charts again. That head had done the favour of marking out the parts he'd explored for shadows, playing the do-gooder like certain Harpers whose graves Montaron had enjoyed the pleasure of spitting on.

"We have walked _hours_," she whined. "This land is displeasing to the eye and I need rest if I must cure you of your own foolish injuries."

And the mad wizard had stepped off into a trance of his own, pig's luck. Montaron stepped forward to grab him by the robes and jerk him out of it, but his hands were already spinning through the air and he was chanting. Fancy white lights shone around Xzar's eyes and he thrust his arms out in front of him like a blind man trying to see with his crutch ripped from under him.

"They say it is the angels who fall from the highest blinding heights," Xzar said. "They say that to the blackest depths there are always those darker. Across the sun a black bird flies. Wings of ivory bone and a skull of long shadows. Build with a north face for the most light to shine in. The brightest lights cast the strongest darkness behind them. Chase the chilly cracks and the bones wrapped in meat; the rabbits bite the sun and the light dies. The shadows run..." He twitched, his fingers moving faster, falling into a trance of mad divination. "In the margins there's a name, secret name, true name, secret history of Manshoon and the rat in the cellars in the bowels of Zhentil Keep. Bears and gold, Monty! But what if the bear's not made of gold? What use a mirror's reflection with eyes? A long time ago little soft feet dance prettily around the summergem ..."

"'Tis meaningless babble, isn't it?" Viconia said.

"Aye," Montaron agreed, and let her be the one to shake Xzar out of it with a mace blow to the back of the skull. Xzar fell to his knees, shaking his head; so addled he wouldn't know what'd hit him. Viconia hid the mace behind her back and gave a treacherous smile.

It was almost a relief when the first shadow struck in that grey wood. Xzar'd strutted on as if he'd got where the shadows came from in the mad spellcasting, and then out it came. It and a friend the same black claws.

He'd a proper weapon, thank noble Lord Corthala for the generous donation. A dweomered dagger with a good plain hilt in iron and copper, and a gleaming-sharp gutlicker of a blade. He'd feed it with whatever the shadows held in place of blood.

His long tooth bit nice and strong. The shadow was clawed and rippled at the edges like wolf-fur. A shadow-werewolf, half wolf half man—mattered as much as counting the tangles in a sheep's wool. The vital thing was—he could cut into its vitals, so to speak. Strings of black mess peeled out from its shape like an orange skin and he moved around it to avoid the claws. The bigger they were, the easier it was to hamstring them.

The second lunged forward; he couldn't hold back both of them. "Mad wizard!" he yelled, signalling. "Flame 'em!"

"I'm sorry, Monty, but that divination and killing the Corthala took all the spells out of me. Ask me tomorrow?"

Then he took off running in circles through the trees. The drow swore in her tongue. Montaron felt the shadow opening below his blade; he slit where hits knees were and brought it down, and then a quick deep slash into where the throat'd be. He'd done the same many a time for fool natural longlimbs without a clue what they were doing. Hadn't thought to wonder what it meant for shadow-creatures.

"You are shadows, I bind you in the name of the Lady of the Night! _Rothrl uns'aa xor peri'sol!_" Viconia yelled out, which had the spectacular effect of drawing the thing to attack her. She screamed.

"Protect me, fool! I cannot heal you if I am drained!"

The shadow he fought had collapsed; Montaron leapt up for the next one's back. The trick was to be fast enough for all the bastards to chase you, and then you'd stab them even as they collided into each other. His sword found a lodgement in the back of it; then the drow used her brains and emptied out a flask of something that smelt like spices and poisonflowers and lit up a blazing burst on the thing.

Montaron went to stab the first shadow to the ground to keep it where it was instead of dwindling to ashes, but yet again it flickered out as if they'd been fighting nothing more than their imaginations. At Viconia's feet there weren't even dust. He wiped sweat from his face and brushed his hands across slashes in his thickened aketon jacket. The mad wizard was still running from it, but that weren't proof; but Montaron himself wasn't the type to lose his sanity. There were shadow-monsters between the trees, and they were there to send them all screaming into the Abyss.

"Umar...nightmare," came the low man's voice from the head in his pack. "Shadow...travellers..."

Montaron picked it up and shook it sharply, and Corthala's dead voice said nothing more.

—

It shouldn't be evening. Fifteenth hour or thereabouts; ye learned a decent sense of time passing when it came to guards and meetings and watches or ye were necromancer's fodder. Third was witching-hour, fifteenth was a happy sunny afternoon with second lunch served out on the table with ale and belt-loosening, if ye were a damned fool hin who'd heard too many bard songs about what their kin did. They should've turned back to Corthala's cabin from the grey forest; shouldn't have followed on. Now they'd a longer way to go back than forward to the cover up ahead on rising hills and caves, and the sun was missing. The forest stretched black thorns woven into each other above them that blocked most of the sky; and it had gone dark as a winter's night. It wouldn't have bothered him if it weren't cursed handwaving. Blame someone's fool wiggling fingers for this bloody mess... Montaron thought again how easily his sword'd fit through the shadows. The drow had given up bitching and moaning for the lost perfume she'd used to set the shadow alight three hours ago, and on the length of the journey one. The mad wizard marched jauntily through the black woods; he'd been given time to read his spells and her ladyship the bloody drow to rest her arse, and they were still walking annoyances.

He glanced down; there was a small piece of stone to vary the neverending waste of ground, and it'd had one side of it carved and graved to a straight surface at some time. He'd rather get to the point of thrusting in the business end of his blade without wasting fool time thinking on legends.

"Monty, it's a hint!" the mad wizard babbled. "People built things. People built where they shouldn't have built. The surprise secret is that when human angels fall they're the ones that build the abysses instead of ones from outside. But when they invite things that knock on the door and won't show their faces, it's no wonder they're troubled..."

Some old hut'd be as good a shelter as any. Fire away shadows and seal it good. The drow stepped faster. There was more stone to be had. Pavings and bits of bricks and then the shape rearing ahead of a building atop a hill. Rounded at the corners, and out its front some sort of statue of no shape. It was big, though, and it made Montaron uncomfortable that none o' the villagers'd seen fit to inform them about the giant ancient building.

"Corthala's notes," the drow said, "there are accounts of an older surfacer settlement here. But he did not know it for himself." Montaron had felt liquid from Corthala's neck still oozing through the bottom of his pack. The thing still felt damp behind him. Day-old blood should have long dried; from the sky's looks the air should be near cold to freeze the blood of a thousand. But the blasted wizard—like enough 'twas his fault. The zombie head didn't make any more noises while they walked further on. By the building itself the trees hadn't finished overgrowing the sky. Lighter spots on the stones looked like paint spatters at first, then it was obvious they were shafts of skylight. They crossed over to walking on solid stone pavers instead of dry dirt, and for all he looked Montaron couldn't see the shadows queuing up to attack just yet.

Xzar pointed to the statue before the building, a thick glassy thing taller than the wizard with as much shape to it as stirred seawater. The sort of work Montaron had always figured was from thieves more shameless than him who'd charge diamonds for a piece of art they'd crafted by kicking it around their bedroom a few times.

"They would dance barefoot around the summerstone," Xzar said. "Soft feet never hurt a pavement brimming with green. It is crystal as a beehive, honeycomb sweetness until..."

Looked like a temple to him, Montaron thought; rounded stuff with ruins of domes on top. Not like a Cyricist twisted thing with architecture that wanted to make your eyes bleed, or a Baneite all lines and black corners; something like the Lathanderians did. There were marks on it that might have been gold-faced roofing that lasted about until the overly trusting marks got it shoved in their faces that some folk'd steal anything not nailed down. Eh, those sorts of gods were molly-headed mercybringers who didn't object to trespassers, and it were an old place anyway.

"What ugly surfacer art," the drow said, glancing around herself with nervous crimson beady eyes. "_Nau thrityhen_. We should not have walked so far. I swear that I feel—"

"But we are where we have to be. Join hands and dance in the light of the prism!" Xzar said.

"Shut up and say what ye _see_, curse ye!" Montaron said. Maundering about, that's what it were below the dark trees. He hated marks who maundered about. He could see in the night better than any human longlimb, even those who finger-wiggled, and here he should've felt nothing more than a quick step toward something they could shield with for a rest.

"I behold surfacer artwork that looks like nothing more than vomit blown into a vaguely triangular shape," Viconia said. "It would be exactly as nauseating rotated in any direction; a perfect illustration of surfacer hubris that they mounted it so elaborately. Oh, _vhaid rivvin_, why are you all imbeciles? Your eyes see nothing from when you are born and so you have no aesthetic to speak of. Even this structure must have once been a true abomination. All meaningless glass lines that are a disgusting grey colour in this land; it hurts my eyes to look upon it and I will die from outraged sensibility before anything else! Perhaps I will make you males smash it for me. No doubt it was tastes like yours that fashioned such terrible sculpture."

"Prism shape," Xzar said softly, staring at it with wide mad eyes, "triangles have only two dimensions. This has four."

"I like my statues with big tits," Montaron said. "There's this nude figure of Lady Alustriel in Orthola gardens in Waterdeep..."

"Then _alu vith natha rothe_, and I think you know exactly what it means, little man!" Viconia said. "Pull on a cow's thick udders while fucking her—if you could reach from your stepladder!"

"Go suck off a carrion crawler," Montaron said easily enough. They were closer to that door, those stone walls; twenty feet or so from the statue in their walk. Xzar whistled a long, tuneless note. Something in the glass across from him seemed to echo it loud and high.

Then there were shadows around them on all sides, and Montaron suddenly knew exactly why none had been able to tell them of the building in front of them.

The mad mage went according to plan close enough; oil on the ground in a circle and then a thick fire-circle springing up to protect them. Then he aimed pain from his hands, and the drow cast something that stunned and slowed the massed shadows. They started reaching limbs above the fire even while it burned them, and Montaron stabbed up and through. The drow's protection rested on him and he walked through the fire unharmed, killing as much as any could want. This time the black shapes lay on the ground like outlines of the charcoal left from some mage's strong fireball.

Too many of them in a swarm, for all he went from one to the other slitting through the back of their knees. They all but seemed blind; the shadows were his cover as well as theirs. Claws bit at him but he wasn't slowing yet. Let the blade feed on black blood—

"Monty," Xzar said, sickly-green mage darts spilling from his hands against four shadows at once, "there's something I should probably have told you."

He'd no breath to curse the fool wizard to the Nine Hells and tell him to spill it before he stabbed him. The drow shrieked a curse in her tongue and lashed out with her mace at a shadow gone too close.

"The statue's a _prism_," Xzar repeated. "Glass reflects. It has four dimensions: height, breadth, width, and hour. The angles in it are perfect to catch the light if it's turned to the right angle and the right time; why can't you read them like an open book? It's the summerstone of honeyed light..."

"Take a path to it!" Montaron shouted, and drove his blade into the next in front of him. Mad wizard was fast on his feet when he had to be; and it sounded like he was casting a half-decent hasting. The next moment Montaron felt the speeding power rush through his veins, and heard the drow laugh. It made you faster than anything else on the battlefield; and it hurt like the Nine Hells at the moment it stopped. But they'd little time. Cold settled in him and he wondered if the claws had bitten and drained. While he'd quickness he could kill. The drow brought down more with her next spell.

The wizard ran to the summerstone with those long chicken legs of his, and Montaron killed everything that lay in his path. The speed bore him on, quicksilver and desperate, and he lunged to split the right arteries and let them all die. It went on, Xzar rushing forward and pulling as hard as he could at the statue, with the shadows doing their best to stop him as if they understood—

At last the stone grunted a final time, and suddenly Montaron stood in broad daylight half blinded, listening to Viconia's sudden scream. He feared claws lancing toward him, not seeing a thing until his eyes changed to it; then he looked properly, and the shadows had gone and left the pavings shining a brilliant gold with the sun still high in the sky. The trees weren't so many around this centre. Through the branches the light patterned everything as it should have.

"The light burns," Viconia said weakly, and tottered toward them as the spell wore off and left them all weak as newborn cullies for the moment.

—

They sat at the base of the stone, the mad wizard shifting it from time to time to get the proper sunlight to bathe away the shadow-creatures. The sun was setting; you couldn't get it to shine when it went below the horizon. Viconia sat with a strip of cloth bandaged around her eyes, and Montaron couldn't help but pant. The light took on a bloodred tinge for sunset. He made himself stop it; there was only one way they could go, after all.

"Get up," he said, "and we go in with torches afire. Or I'll stick the burning end in your eyes for a quick mercy kill."

Inside the temple they lit up the stone steps that crept down to darker places, and then in the stone walls the shadows came again, howling like wolves.

—


	5. Little Bones And The Knight

_Warning_: The cruelty-to-minors chapter. Also contains a short paladin.

—

He slammed the stone door shut behind them and hoped the shadows wouldn't beat against this wall. Here they'd more substantial figure: they left black corpses on the ground when they burned and died. Too bad they were harder to kill. Montaron flicked the dark blood off his sword and watched his torch burn. Something beat against the door, and nothing slid through the cracks on hinge and sill. The drow cast what she said was a ward and leaned back.

"It's wide," Montaron said. "Walk, drow; seal off against more happy surprises."

"We're here," Xzar said, delighted as a noble's brat on Winterfair-morning. "Bring out the head of Lord Corthala, Montaron! I want to make his eyes light up in joy. Literally."

The thing made noises in Xzar's hands, and stunk to the Nine Hells; then the brown eyes erupted with a sickly green light that shone into the corners and depths of the walls. Blasted head looked to be glaring everywhere. Out of vague superstition Montaron avoided its direct eyes.

They found a corridor patrolled by only one creature, a wolf of shorter variety whose throat Montaron managed to slit after a fight. It lay bleeding black with its head cut off for good measure. The drow bent over it.

"What fashion of creature are you, traitor to the Lady of the Night?" she whispered, and dug her fingers into the bleeding wound at the neck. "A howler with _zik yinnin_, a wailer with sharp teeth. And to which surfacer deity does a place such as this belong?"

There was a door sealed with some emblem that would've answered her question if any of 'em had surface theology worth noting. Montaron picked it open, its rust making the job soft and easy. Ahead were smaller cells like a temple's priestly meditation rooms, or wanker's or slugabed's rooms. Let 'em pick one and have the drow ward the doors, and times were good to snatch a bit of rest. The shadow-creatures were lots of things but they weren't _smart_; but there had to be someone or something holding charge. Xzar skipped along the passageway with skirts held high, Corthala's head floating dourly above him.

"Slow it, mad wizard," Montaron said.

There were sounds coming from the last door. The three of them stood in front of it; it was fastened with a lock too high for halfling's reach, bolted on the outside.

"Travellers!" a woman's voice said, a glass-cutter accent like some blasted paladin, though it was weak-sounding. "I see your light! Do you hear me in return?"

"Far too loudly," Viconia complained, a smile spreading on her face with easy cruelty. "We are commissioned to rescue pitiful Imnesvale; why have the shadows kept you prisoned?"

"There can be no harm in telling you, for if you are a trick of it you must know already. And for the first time you bring light," the woman said. "The shadows...slew my Patrick, and slew the rest of us; and spoke that I was wanted for a consort, for what that may mean. It took Merella, a ranger..." The woman's voice broke. "Release me and I shall fight evil by your side. I swear I shall not falter again. I am Mazzy Fentan, knight of Arvoreen and a servant of righteousness and justice!"

Hin deity; halfling acting like a bloody paladin.

"I am Viconia DeVir, a drow cleric of Shar," Viconia said. "Oh, and the two males are Zhentarim. I'm told that is quite evil in the surface world."

—

The armour weren't in bad condition, decent metal but a touch too heavy for the way he liked to fight, a lack of platemetal-rattling before his blade ended up in their back. The shortbow and quiver he picked up ready in case of finding a use for them; and then the sword gave a jolt in his hands and shocked him with divine flare. He screamed out and swore.

"The blade of my lady Arvoreen is not fit for the likes of you!" Fentan complained, gloating over his pain and shock; he ought to belt her one for it. They'd tied her hand and foot to rest in a cell. She was a tall red-haired hin, built with muscle wasted from her prisoning and a chest that might've been fuller if she'd been fed up some. She was pale and thin and dirt-faced, glaring at them out of eyes as violent as the wizard's in one of his moods. The Shade Lord'd want his consort alive, and for that she was worth keeping that way until the shadows decided she was surplus to requirements.

"You are plainly as evil as those you claim to fight," Fentan went on, her pipes rising higher. "You have murdered that poor man whose head you keep above you as a vile trophy; you actively serve evil through each breath you take; you pervert the course of life and justice..."

"That poor man was a murderer of wizards of the governing authority of Amn," Viconia said. "Perhaps you should try to be less...what would you surfacers say? Judgmental, perhaps? You begin to bore me, female."

"—I have no reason to believe a word you say, and using him thus is beyond the bounds of all decency!" She glared at Montaron. "You may seem to be hin, but you are none of our clans and nothing like my Patrick! Arvoreen will see you punished for your transgressions of all the hearth we hold dear—"

"Eat up your meat," Montaron said, and all but forced the dried jerky into her mouth. Her cheeks reddened in anger, but she was just bright enough to think she might get a bit of her strength back for whatever escape she'd try later. Then he let her some water. "Will I need to gag ye, or would you like to bring all the shadows down on us?"

Yeah, she gambled on the Shade Lord being worse than two Zhents and a Sharran, no matter what she whistled in your ear about it. More fool her, shutting up and trying to glare with dignity at the necromancer studying his spells with the book bobbing around his head like an apple in the water.

Viconia gathered up scrapings of stone and dirt in her hands, casting some sort of spell; she made them look like a heap of grey sand, small and fine. "I am going to bathe in sand and oil," she announced. "Only the uncivilised apes are unclean. Mage, I suppose by the standards of humans you are acceptable; but when was your last bath, _sakphul_?"

"Couple months," Montaron said, giving her a longer time than he remembered to shock her. Women fussed about these little things. That was the reason why paid whores were better: enough gold and they didn't nag.

"_Dirty_," Xzar said, pointing at him and giggling.

"I'm not taking my kit off in the middle of a dungeon," Montaron said indignantly. "Go ahead and give us a peep-show, drow. If it's good, I'll show ye an Amnian band of pearls." Didn't take her long to understand the gesture; Fentan gave a shocked noise.

"You may hang my cloak up for a screen," Viconia said, suddenly angry again—didn't take much to set the wench off, Montaron thought, impressed with himself—"and if you dare look I will cast a permanent spell of withering on your privates!"

"Understood, miss!" Xzar said, and buried himself in his book.

"No chance of a wizard eye?" Montaron asked him.

The drow scrubbed herself with sand and oiled down her skin, her feet bare and hairless, flinging her ghost-white hair up above her cloak.

"Up and says outright we're Zhentarim," Montaron complained to Fentan. "No sense at all, that wench. We don't go around 'splaining to southern folk that we're agents of the Black Network."

"Because you fear reprisal by the good," Fentan said coldly. "Evil cannot stand. Sooner or later good men band together to rid the world of darkness. Arvoreen will be with me even as you slay me."

"Is she your mother, then?" the wizard said, leaning over her. "Arvoreen? She who guides your path and your blade?"

"I serve her as a knight. You Zhentarim are slaves to the Lord of Lies; or is it the Tyrant Lord again this month?" Fentan said. "It's hard to remember when you change cloaks so often."

"Not me. No, not me." The crazed wizard shook his head. "I'm alone. I don't have to bow and scrape and pretend to believe things I don't. I won't belong to anyone— And that's not my point! You rot in a dungeon. Arvoreen left you to rot in a dungeon. Res ipsa."

"The gods are not called to repair each small misfortune," Fentan said, trying to look through the mad wizard like a Zhent noble imagining the peasants weren't spilling stink over his fancy-flown tiles. "You speak like a heretic..."

"_I will not worship_," Xzar said, half-singing like a knuckleheaded troubadour, hopelessly childish. "The rabbits eat you from the toes up. Your mother hates you, she left you. Why not bite off your own fingers to save you from starvation?"

"Necromancer," Fentan said, not flapping her lips too loudly, "Arvoreen is infinitely nobler than you think. Can you understand what is freely given?"

"Amusing lies, false promises, and torment others get to feel? Don't tell me, rosy knight. That was not your answer?" the boy-mage said.

"Your mistake is to think everyone is like you," Fentan said. "I give faith to Arvoreen; when you listen to others you must know that we choose a better course. I have sworn to deeds of kindness and virtue in her name, and I feel her still within me. Choosing to give freely, on both sides, creates a bond that cannot be broken."

"Are you certain?" Viconia said, swaying wrapped in her cloak above Fentan. "I have broken those of your kind and humans alike..." She raised her holy symbol for a threat. Spell-casting, Montaron saw, translucent strings of black smoke reaching to the wouldbe paladin— He stood to knock the pair of fools out of their—pissing contest, it'd be called were they men. Fentan set her face and stared into the drow's eyes, and then it was Viconia to take a step slowly back.

"I will not yield. You are weak," Fentan said, and then the drow backhanded her in the mouth, hard enough to dislodge a tooth.

"Say that once more and you will be a sacrifice to Shar this night."

"You have no...instabilities of an excuse for evil, drow," Fentan said slowly, spitting blood. "Neither you nor the halfling..."

"And the wizard is a necromancer," Xzar said, and gestured up at Corthala's head. It moved down to stare close into Fentan's eyes. He giggled. "That's it! If you're a powerful necromancer then the rabbits can't hurt you. If you know enough of the planes that cross into and under bringing darkness."

"We move on, if your Ladyship's done with the bath," Montaron snapped. "I'll bring Fentan lest ye damage the merchandise further."

—

Longlimb-sized dark stone corridors made him half lose his sense of direction in their echoing turns. Far worse than that blasted maze below Ulcaster all for a damned book for the do-gooding Bhaalspawn; and the shadow-wolves far worse than those undead wolves. Some of them stayed away when the drow threatened Fentan; some of them he killed, running swift across the ground and driving blade well into neck. In one bite lead drained into his bones again and he swore at the drow for her to cast that prayer again.

"It _drains_ me," she complained, leaning on Fentan as a walking-stick. "Here I suppose I must support you or perish myself—"

"Here we stand making sure ye keep good enough condition for it, for it ain't more pleasant to suffer through," Montaron said. Xzar brushed his hands over a mage's false armour, a dagger in his fingers. "Couldn't ye cast anything aforehand to stop it happening?"

She pulled herself up to full height, short for a pointy-ear and scarce a foot above him. "Fool! Don't pretend you know the least thing of my power. Males are never favoured by the divine in the Underdark, because you're all weaklings and fools... _Nau._ A moment. Shar, hear my prayer. Is it possible to grant...?"

She promptly dropped to her knees in a shadowed corner. Montaron eyeballed Fentan to make sure she didn't get any bright ideas; the mad wizard wandered off, picking over something on the ground and storing something in his cloak. It was a pale dirty piece of old stick—no. It was bone; Montaron wasn't one to worry too much over a necromancer practicing his profession.

"You have native cunning enough to earn your life another day, _sakphul_," the drow snapped, rising from her knees. "Come here." She laid hands over him, and chanted something that seemed to settle on his skin; dark and if anything creepier than the necromancer's mad foolings with mage-shielding, but it felt as if it kept there and did its job against the things that would make him weak as a nursing brat.

"Wizard, get back here and shift your legs," Montaron ordered. "Your turn to drag Queen Fentan."

"I must be almost done collecting the puzzle pieces," Xzar said, and sang. "The radius and the ulna connected to the carpals; the carples connected to the metacarpals. The metacarpals connected to the proximal phalanges, and so many tiny little pieces..."

"Yer wasting time," Montaron spat, and went over to drag the fool.

"Don't you see that it's _important_, Monty?" Xzar pulled one bone about the size of Montaron's forearm out of his robes, and then a larger second one. The first was pale below dirt and dust. As for the second—Montaron knew perfectly well it were natural as what they said priest Fzoul Chembryl of the Keep liked to do with goats. A dark grey turned half to solid black in the sickly green magelight, riddled with more holes than a Lathanderian's cheating cheesemaking, as if it ought to have fallen apart long ago. "That from a shadow-wolf," Xzar said, showing the contrast; "this from—a necromantic puzzle! Lead me to more pieces, Monty. You won't regret it, promise..."

"Like ye said I wouldn't regret poking the sleeping wyvern's tail? Like ye said I wouldn't regret dashing into fighting six ghouls at once? Like ye said I wouldn't regret thieving the ring and necklace of the two most powerful necromancers in the city?"

"Well..." Xzar said. "Maybe exactly like that! But it's all part of a brilliant adventure with friends, isn't it?"

"I am no friend to any of you," Fentan said, as if bringing trouble she earned on herself were part of knighting.

—

Eight—no, nine shadows, now; hissing for the return of the consort. Viconia produced a dagger held to Fentan's throat. The fool mage had hesitated to pick up something else in the corners, and they were separated in three.

"We carry the Shade Lord's plaything to him; if she dies your master shall be displeased!" the drow threatened them. They approached her closer, and Montaron saw it; that if Fentan died the shadows would have them. They'd tire with the shadows surrounding them; and then they could have what they wanted— He tensed, ready.

"—Or what if she is _nautgordo_...mutilated?" Viconia suggested, and moved the knife to Fentan's bound hands. The knight tried to kick her in the shins. "Does your master want her missing a hand, a foot, a breast or two? Does he truly?"

They hesitated, then, fixing what they had instead of eyes on the drow. Xzar's magelight dimmed, the crazy mage stopped and staring with his fists pressed to his chin.

"_Emara_!" Fentan cried to one of them. A taller shadow hissed at her, human-shaped. "Emara, my friend! Is there none left of yourself?"

And was that what they did to ye, when the claws bit deep and made your strength the same as a wet rabbit? The drow's warding still lay on him, of that at least Montaron was certain. Shadows—she mightn't be able to command them for they weren't her goddess'; the mad mage might be bloody useless as per usual; but Montaron knew how to move through them and kill things from behind. He didn't need the mad mage's fading light to see, and didn't need it to allow them to see him.

Mage first; the drow held 'em waiting to her voice. The end of the dagger bit quick and quiet and deep into the back, and he was still in the darkness away from what they had in place of eyes. Viconia cried out; Fentan broke free at last, kicking her then flinging herself to a shdow as if she could damage unarmed. Montaron stuck his dagger deep into where the kidneys should've been of the next one in his way, and this time another of them saw him.

"_Bloody wizard!"_ A sudden spark of blinding light, false light; Montaron was in the shadows it cast, and stopped a creature just before it reached the mage. The strike wasn't so good, not full in the vitals like when he'd time to prepare a mark; but it scraped through and then Xzar gave his share of missiles that beat into it. Two laid hands on Fentan and tried to drag her off, as if they could get her through shadowed cracks in the floor. No sense in taking chances; he'd threaten Fentan himself if he had to, slit out her eyes for the Shade Lord— They were soft-boned and he'd jumped high. His weight made a black wrist cut off from the shape, but it didn't stop the shadow. Then slam Fentan's thick skull with the pommel so she'd be sensible and unconscious; and cut into the shadows and don't let them kill you—

Viconia's mace flashed through the dark with her surrounded. She weren't bad, weren't good either, and they made her bleed.

"Spell ye used for the gibberlings, mage! Get it flung!" Montaron yelled. He gibbered something about rising dark and shadows from places beyond, knuckles bitten in his face: exactly the wrong time for him to lose it. Montaron stripped a throwing knife from his belt and threw it hilt-first to his forehead, then rushed a shadow's legs while another tried it with him from behind.

"But—I only have shadow-skulls besides the puzzle, Monty! Oh, and a bit of sulphur and guano scrapings... Get down for a cheap trick of invocation!"

Fire scorched through the air, just above Montaron's head; the drow knew enough to duck and it only singed her. Then there was mopping-up to be done, with him having to slit the throats of the ones still moving while all the drow did was try to patch them up, standing between the pair of frails and getting their throats duly slit. Xzar lit a fire in a puddle of oil that kept flaring longer than it should've, letting them have a moment of rest. Montaron cleaned his blade on the fur of a shadow-wolf.

"Rest a moment," Viconia said, smoothing her clothes. "We have learned that they wish Fentan in particular, and that they convert the bodies of those they kill."

Weren't nothing left of Emara but a singed spot on the floor, not far from Fentan's head. Black scratches into your body until the black took all of you and left your bones riddled and hollow exactly like the bones the wizard had shown. He kept control of himself; he'd fought bloodsuckers and ghouls and the mad wizard's experiments gone wrong, and ye needed to stay ready.

He flung his sheath aside with a clatter. "Bloody wizard! What in all the Nine Hells do you think ye're doing!"

"The _puzzle_, Monty. All the pieces are here. Isn't it nice?"

"That," Viconia said, leaning over the mad mage and the arrangement on the cloak he'd laid on the ground, "is a _child_."

There were bones there: a full skeleton, all joined to each other, skull and ribcage and arms and legs. Short enough for a halfling; small enough that it wasn't. Human child.

"Yes. Won't she be fun to reanimate?" Xzar said. He scattered chips of black stone around the body.

"—That's a child!" Montaron yelped. "Ye can't do that to a— We might've let kids get hurt once or twice, but ye don't make a zombie of a—"

"Silly, silly, Monty." Xzar waved a long forefinger down at his face. "You think that bad things never happen to children. Of course they do! They happen to _everyone_. _Tu surge, puella_..."

"I don't kill kids and I don't like 'em used for necromancy," Montaron said, aiming the knife; but the mage had already started. "Some lines ain't meant to be crossed, madman."

"Slaying infants of no importance never gave any deity greater strength," Viconia said. "If there is no reason, you need not do it! From practicality," she said.

But it had begun. Xzar brought his hands through the air, and the bones of the child rose up together.

"I want no part in this," Montaron said.

"I animate...grown things," Viconia said, "they are more effective."

The kid was slightly shorter than Montaron, and between her bones it looked like clear jelly was gathering. The bones were slightly yellowed, old; some shadow or something had killed her and scattered her bones away. Looking into a child's skull taken by a freak necromancer weren't his idea of fun. The drow raised a hand to cover her eyes.

"I did _not_," Viconia said. "The Spider Queen was enraged, but I knew that it would have not made her stronger or more influential or a greater deity. I lost my will and did not slay the baby. It was one of the lesser priestesses who took her life. I lost my favour to the Spider Queen, I left my home, and I chose not to slay that because it would have been useless..."

"Ye left the Underdark for being too lily-livered a drow?" Montaron said, just to torment her. Blast the mad wizard! Leave graves to be where they were. Use Corthala's head as a football all he wanted, kill Fentan and turn her ribs to a backscratcher, but this one gave him the shivers. Human girl's animated body. The jelly-stuff settled on her—and worse, it was giving a shape to the moving skeleton.

"There must have been a reason," Xzar lectured, staring at the thing he'd created that shouldn't exist, "why they used others to make shadows. But not these bones. They scattered them and they couldn't touch them."

Yellow-haired, the ghost had been. Yellow-haired and tan-skinned like she spent time out in the sun, yellow-eyed, dressed in old robes. The jelly-stuff settled over her and changed like she was still walking here in her old home. Old-fashioned heavy silk robes in pale pink and yellow and orange. Ye left kids like that out of the paths of your blade; they weren't no threat. And the ghost wept without a sound, tears spreading down her cheeks over and over and never landing on the ground. Cried like the child she was.

"She wears robes of a priestess, and the symbol is _sun_," Viconia snapped. "I left the drow and gained uneasy nightmares. I see now that this old temple was as much an enemy to Shar as this male shade. Truly I am never well-fortuned."

The girl-ghost wept on while Xzar watched her. She opened her mouth, but no sounds came out. He raised a hand, and her bones walked forward in obedience to him. Fentan stirred on the ground below, and started yelling and screaming.

—

The ghost girl had cried for the past hours. Montaron kicked at a bit of twisted skeleton lying on the ground. This one'd been adult longlimb; why couldn't the mad wizard have picked one of those to puzzle over? He could crack open kneejoints with the best of them and finish the undead easy. Instead the weepy child-priestess kept sobbing silently.

"Stop crying," Xzar told her, dropping to one knee to make her height. You'd think the sun-deity types who liked kittens and prancing around with flowers in their hair and fertilising things would pick up one of their own, 'stead of trapping their ghosts where mad necromancers could get at them. Then Viconia voiced the same he'd wondered.

"_Perhaps_ she is important to this place," the drow said icily. "At least her wailing makes less noise than the halfling knight."

"Desecrators," Fentan said weakly, almost subdued now, head lumpy still from that blow.

"Here you are." Xzar flicked a few gibbets of what might have been blackened liver out of a large grey handkerchief, and held it up to the girl's face. It went through her translucent skin. "Why don't I try again?" He waved his hands in the air above the child's arms. He moved his fingers like scissors, chanting. A square piece of pale gold material flew away from the child's ethereal right sleeve. The rough handkerchief moved to the girl's face to cover her tears. "There, there. That's what they're supposed to say, isn't it? Maybe you'll feel happier soon. Thinking of magic always helps. Or picking which of the voices in your head to listen to. Or making good friends and family, like Monty and Lady DeVir here. But sometimes I remember the rabbits, being cold in the dark, what happens when you're alone and nobody is going to come for you ever again and everyone will hurt you the moment they want to and in the night what happens if someone can see but you haven't taken elven eyes instead, or the priests and the eyes in the dark chase you and claim you because of everything you are and everything you will be. Little feet danced around the summerstone and they cut out your heart and they sealed you here and ruined your bones, and then I saw you dancing in the sunshine. Were you happy until they hurt you? That's easy to be. If you can't fight the bunnies, then you'll always be afraid of being alone in the night. Unless the threads in the air come to give you solace; and in weaving them spirits like you come to be your friend..."

Xzar guided the child to the next room, where blackened tiles marked and scarred a once-carved floor and statues lay smashed in piles of stone dust. There, in the bricks of the walls, an oddity; Montaron smashed open the old hiding-spot and got out a teardrop-shaped rock that turned pearl-white when he wiped it, and a few scattered sling bullets. Then he stopped, hearing the grinding of stone; an old trap, old trigger that still worked, whether by this or by the latest paving the drow or the mad mage'd trodden upon he didn't know. "Down—" he shouted, fearing lightning bolts or worse. A mountain of bones rose high as the ceiling, its arms gigantic scythes and its skull burning red.

The biggest tangled the best in wires and old rope. Montaron sat, brushing off singes and smoke from one of the wizard's bad-aimed spells. Viconia touched a fragment of smashed skull and watched it crumble to dust. The ghost-girl had moved close to the spot in the walls; she held the handkerchief from her sleeve up to her face, weeping still.

"_Monty_," the mad wizard snapped, one hand on his waist, holding out his left hand. Took a moment to figure it; then Montaron handed over the bullets so the mage could tell if they were fancy or not. Xzar waited impatiently and he passed over the gemstone as well.

"Don't eat it," he told the wizard wearily, "don't ruin it unless ye explain to me why you're taking down our profit, don't lose it, and don't come up with any bright ideas of doing something I didn't list just to annoy me." Worth a few gold at least; nice quality, moonstone-like. The bullets had a trace of gold below their grime, but gold wasn't the right metal for weapons, more like to be fool's gold. The wizard cast some divination spell on the lot of them, throwing bullets and stone up in the air alike to spin around his head like some overwealthy fool's orrery.

"—A droplet of honey is perfectly balanced: geometric magnificence, surface tension, gravity into direction; sphere extended in formula. And a droplet of pearl shine enchanted to remain..." Black dirt washed off the circles rotating around him. The bullets glinted gold in the dark and the moonstone started to glow pale. He marched over to the wall, knelt down by the child again, and stuck the stone in the centre of her forehead.

Her snivelling started to be heard instead of only seen. The ghost-kid wept and wailed softly; not as bad as the Bhaalspawn brat's whining, resigned as if the child was used to misery. Her outline got stronger around her bones, skin filling in above her skull and her tears brighter, though you could still see she was a walking corpse that oughtn't to be. And her eyes glowed light gold.

"Child," Fentan said, her shoulder smashed and bloody from a fallen brick in the battle. "Release her, necromancer!"

The child sobbed, and the necromancer tried to wipe her face. Then she turned to a chattier ghost.

"Misery inside you," she said. She raised a bony hand and touched Xzar's cheek the same way he laid a hand on her face, and it was creepy as all hells. "Pieces of a broken vase flying as if they wanted to be a different shape. The night broke you." High voice, childish piping half-whispered, carried on the winds of some other plane. Nothing he could do but keep a good grip on his sword, Montaron thought.

"They can't break you twice," Xzar said. "Be many things; be nothing; fly in the shatters of you. The jagged glass reflections make it the truth that everything happens simultaneously, to let it all be true at the same moment. Riddle me, when can nobody hurt you? When the you is not yourself."

"Lock in a black box room," the child said. Her bones travelled down the necromancer's cheekbones, and she stared at him with gold eyes turning a paler white. She smiled below her tears, and her skull's teeth widened below her skin. "I wouldn't lock you in a black box room, strange boy. But Lord Amaunator would, for he is just. I can't feel him any more."

"They leave you," Xzar said, nodding madly as if he understood everything the ghost said, "they forget to help you while you're hurt. I don't remember."

"I had a fever. It was a long time ago. Everything was yellow and I dreamed of headaches and nothing fitting together. The sun cast shadows. I'm much older than you, I think," the girl-ghost said. "It was dark, and it's still dark. You're dark."

"Amauna. Your name is Amauna, and you see things others couldn't see," Xzar said.

"You hear voices others can't hear, and you turn them into destruction," Amauna said. "I want to go home."

—


	6. Lord of Shadows

"—We front up to the dragon like we're delivering Fentan to the precious Shade Lord, and we make bloody sure it can't follow us up the stairs—" Montaron said. He'd scouted around; and before them was the way to the dragon, and behind them they'd been trapped. Take a few moments of breathing-space to rest and they took advantage of it—he was the trap-grappler and the only one with sense, he was the one should've noticed and found a place small enough for him at least to get out and escape, should've figured that where they sat wasn't big enough to get back out of the temple— The drow drove anger in at herself too, for she claimed it was a trap worthy only of the rankest of amateurs in the Underdark.

A rockfall brought down by shadows cut them off from going back, and the creatures stood guard beyond it. The wizard incinerated a few, and yet over time they grew back and fled away; and Xzar could have helped to start to clear the block too, but they had a near endless supply of raw stone and earth to work from. Fentan's group had disappeared from Imnesvale two tendays ago, and she'd long lost time passing; and now they felt it too. The drow whined over not being able to pray midnights, and Montaron felt exhausted and ill-hedged with the off-balance that could get ye killed fast as anything else.

"Nothing else left to try," Montaron said, and better to die trying to kill something than slowly starving here.

"A beautiful creature," Xzar said. "Black glass wings and such sharp teeth. When its wings beat the bones scream, and the air breaks down to dust."

Fentan coughed faintly; maybe she'd be first to die from weakness. The ghost-girl sat in the mad mage's lap with her bony hand locked around his arm.

"The third holy ceremony is where the sons and daughters are raised to bid farewell to the setting sun and then the prayer to the light tomorrow is read aloud," Amauna recited. "The second holy ceremony is to pluck a golden flower and offer it up to the midday sun and sing the hymn to the light. The first holy ceremony is to rise and greet the sun with gentle hands and wordless song. The fourth holy ceremony is to bring back the sun on the winter solstice in the dark backwards and everything weeps widdershins. The fifth holy ceremony is to consecrate the body of the prophetess to the sun in the light outside the prism like a weapon to burn her heart. The eighth holy ceremony is to lie on the altar and take up the golden knives. The third holy ceremony is..."

Like a failed musician who didn't know when to shut up his broken songs. The ghost-child spoke with her creepy eyes nowhere on any of them, into the air repeating the same she had for nights. Fentan weren't any help in getting her away from Xzar, the one who'd desecrated her bones.

"Bring back the sun widdershins," Xzar said, and that mad grin spread between the tattoos on his face. "Monty, we have a working plan. Widdershins with the prophetess of the Sun dissuading."

"And Fentan our hostage. The brightest lights cast the strongest shadows," Viconia said. She reached down, and carefully and deliberately stroked Fentan's hair to taunt her. "Isn't it interesting, little one, that the Shade Lord wants a knight of Arvoreen for his own? None of us would be _sanctified_ enough. Except for the dead brat, if she were not dead."

"—I serve my lady. My sword is my lady. My sword is my life. I am a blade of Arvoreen of righteousness. I—" Fentan cried. Since the concussion she'd lost half her senses.

"Enough." Viconia backhanded her.

"Flares and shields and restorations," Montaron told the casters. "Make me fast, mad-mage, and make it last proper. Or ye won't."

_I am...Thaxll'ssillyia. I have a name. I have a form. And I have a hunger_, the voice of the dragon pierced past them, nothing near mortal, straight into their minds like a black spear to their heads.

The roof above her, Montaron noticed—she mightn't be a her, but something in the voice was like the drow—was glittering from the light spilling from Amauna's shape, was thin and veined-looking, like it was grey wings itself that could fold back and set her free. Darkness lay beyond her.

"We bring the Shade Lord's consort to him, _us'jalil tagnik'zur_," Viconia said, smooth as silken bonds.

_Respectful._ A dead-black tongue curled out of a mouth with teeth that looked like they were made of glass. The mad wizard was preparing some spells like he ought to be; and Amauna spun widdershins, light spinning around her from the jewel in her forehead and out from her ghost's eyes. _I know no other dark mortal creatures._

Then Thaxll'ssillyia moved her wings; and Montaron saw exactly what the crazy mage had said. Where she shifted them through the air it turned to dust, wiping away real things. She didn't belong here. Sort of thing that made ye want to hurl out your belly, things that didn't belong.

_I know another sky_, Thaxll'ssillyia whispered, and Amauna answered her:

"I know other skies too. I could see far into the distance beyond the sun." And where the ghost-priestess danced and lit up part of the dragon's wing, it turned glassy as if it was part of some mad illusion.

"Let us pass with the small knight," Viconia said, and the black dragon raised a long wing to let them to the stairs upward.

—The stairs upward. As if they found their way to the surface again. Why'd a Shade Lord keep himself upstairs when his creatures liked dark? The mad wizard was humming while they tracked up the old stone stairs, too tall for a halfling's comfort, Fentan dragged behind the drow. At the end of it a door opened and they found themselves in the dark. Black thorns grew too thickly for any sun to pass through, too many to slice through. There was dry earth below their feet, ground instead of underworld; but that must be the Shade Lord waiting by.

"Patrick. Arne. Phoebe. Agnola. Jarvis," Fentan whispered, and black shapes—longlimb and hin—peeled themselves free from a gathering around an altar in the centre of the ground. They carried weapons: halberd, sword, bow, hammer. Sooner or later they'd fight. "Is there nothing left of the souls you were?"

"You've come to me, my knight miniature," said a woman's voice. A black cloak covered her body: below her hood was an ordinary human face, long and lean and tanned. Then you saw the eyes were black and the shape was dead as anything the necromancer played with.

"We were thinking of trading her for our lives," Viconia said, taking care to sound as if she wasn't. "But, of course, there is the minor detail that we cannot trust you, Shade..._Lord_."

"This skin?" The woman raised a gloved her hand, her sleeve falling to show bared arm. Maggots crawled between fragments of tendons and flesh. Black bones were riddled with holes. "A little thing I threw on not too long ago."

'Splained the mystery of the dragged-off ranger.

"Give my new consort to me," the Shade Lord said, dropping Merella's hand to rest on the blackened altar.

Amauna screamed. "This was the altar to the Sun," she cried. "He'll desecrate her like my bones. Don't let him."

The Shade Lord stepped forward, and his black cloak blew through the air even though there wasn't any wind here. The ends of it licked at Amauna's bones. "Defiled beyond the orders of my minions. Reanimated in darkness, my old enemy. You can't stand against me with your tainted light."

"...Yes. Yes, that was completely my fault, wasn't it?" Xzar said. "You need a living body to dance yourself into this world."

"Your old body decays and you require the little knight," Viconia said, her teeth glinting white in the darkness. "An amateur's trick to give so much knowledge away. Among the drow you would last a minute or two at most."

"Then walk away," the Shade Lord said. "Oh, I forget. I have trapped you here." True enough, Montaron thought, keeping balance; they should've taken surprise and attacked first off. The shadows here were heavy shapes, black and solid and armed. Have the mage fireball the archer, the Shade Lord... Doors'd closed behind them: stone thick enough to block a dragon.

_I have a plan_, the cursed drow assured.

"Do you know how delicious a soul strong enough to dedicate to a knight's path in the body of a halfling? Mazzy Fentan burns like the sun. The laws of chaos reverse."

Mazzy Fentan did whatever heroes did, and rose up even weak and starved as she was. Did whatever heroes did, nicely taking the blows for the profit of others.

"Come and join us, Mazzy," a human-shaped shadow said. "I changed. I can't wait to feel you ripped open under me, screaming my name."

"—_Patrick_—" Mazzy cried; and then she flung herself backward onto Montaron's blade. It cut the bonds on her hands; then she was on the shadow, breaking his arm and seizing his weapon.

"—Wizard, now!" Xzar flung his spell: green stuff immolated the black bowman in the back. Montaron flung himself below the halberdman, let the weapon flail in the empty air above his head— He cut into its body; but the shadows grew back faster than he could hurt them. The mad mage flung spells at the Shade Lord and the altar it rested on, and shook him a bit. Montaron moved fast, tangling the shadows who chased him with each other. His blade stripped a black throat at hin-height, but with its master nearby it healed over itsef. He shoved one of the gold bullets into a cut and felt the flesh jerk over it inside the body. The drow—

One of the shadows had Viconia down, pincushioned with a black javelin. She shouted out, hands bloody; and then the Shade Lord sent Xzar down beside her. And all the ghost-priestess did was stand and wail like a child—

Then they were all on him, trapping him between dark flesh nothing like what the drow offered to anything that moved. He didn't lose his grip of the sword; but it sunk into their parts and barely hurt them. Some still smelled of Xzar's fires.

Fentan was last to go, it sounded like.

"Thank you, Patrick. Bring her to me."

"—Turning into women's bodies? What kind of molly-boy Shade Lord are ye?" Montaron shouted. Black oily stuff was shoved into his mouth. He spat and bit.

"The brightest stars cast the darkest voids when they change," the Shade Lord said. "My knight has only brought me...dragon food. Perhaps the necromancer could have damaged me in more time; but you were lost the moment you tried to challenge me."

"I thought so," the drow said. "Loss attends us like a sister."

"I want to peel your lovely flesh and drain the life from you like an orange, Mazzy, and leave you an empty ruined shell," the shadow of her man said. "You ask if there is anything left of me? I remember the last we were together. I want you below me again."

Fentan's voice was high and shrill. "_Not my Patrick!_"

"How bright she burns," the Shade Lord's cold voice said. And the drow chimed in again.

"He will use you, Fentan. I ought to have slain you."

"_Get away from me_!" Fentan cried out, and Montaron got a sight of it when one of the shadows who held him moved. Fentan struggled on the altar like a pinned cockroach held down by her man, and the drow flopped forward, still wounded. The Shade Lord stripped off a glove and laid a rotting hand across Fentan's face, fingers on her eyes.

"I do not need to lie to you, Fentan," Viconia said. "He will use your soul to be stronger than ever before, and he will slay countless others. But, of course, you are not a knight to ever make any meaningful sacrifice."

"_Arvoreen!_ I would not—do not—"

And something dark passed between the bony hand and Fentan's face, and she screamed like a mating tomcat.

"_I would bring dark to you all and slay anything in my path_," Fentan's voice broke from her mouth. "_I will stand on a mountain of corpses and destroy any who ever called me short! I will kill far more than I ever thought possible, and soak the Realms in blood—_

"No! No—please—Arvoreen—Patrick—" Fentan stopped and begged. The thing had a hold on her. The drow said a few words of her own, some prayer that made Fentan turn to her.

"Selfish," Viconia said, "all of you holy ones are hypocrites in the end. Your upright soul turns to darkness of equal measure, and you do not end it when you can."

The bitch had to say it. Always her precious cursed goddess of hers. All her fault that dragon's glass teeth would be biting down on all of them soon enough.

"My faith to Arvoreen," Fentan said. Her skin changed to black on her nails and skin of the fingers, the ranger's old body starting to fall away beside her. "You are...evil. No. Never—"

"I am a liar too, but I am not lying now and you know it," Viconia said. "One chance. He overwhelms all here, and only you have the power..."

"Dragon food," hissed the Shade Lord through Fentan's mouth. "Stand up and kill them all."

"Renounce your goddess and darken your soul," Viconia said.

Fentan struggled again. The shadow held her in place, and Montaron felt the touch of the shadows clawing him where he was. He clawed back. "Then let me surrender my salvation—darken me to weaken him—" Fentan begged. "I swear apostasy to Arvoreen!"

It was words; but this time something happened to Fentan for taking the name of her goddess in vain.

"A virtuous heretic is still virtuous," Viconia breathed, and she stood with the wound in her side mended, her dress bloodied. "You have lost all. Now call to Shar."

And then the drow prayed some more, her holy symbol high in the air, and Montaron never knew exactly what she did in that moment of shadows everywhere, Sharran and Shade Lord and fallen paladin on the altar—

Things became something else in dreams. The Shade Lord reached into what already belonged to the night, and the priestess of Shar called her goddess to overwhelm foreign shadows. The child of the sun wept helplessly. The masked assassin whirled, blade through the shadows in his way; and the Lady of Darkness sealed the invader to the cold plane he came from. Fentan, black-armoured and raising a dark sword, stood cold sentinel against the Shade Lord. She was corpse-pale, guardian of the realm of the Lady. Viconia DeVir smiled.

The altar was still black, Fentan was laid out on it not breathing, and the black hulking shadows stood like an honour guard. The wizard sat up in tattered robes, and Montaron picked himself up from the ground. Dead halfling knight; and still a reanimated brat that shouldn't be, bones in yellow silks on dark purple-grey tiles, beside the wizard by the barrier of black thorns against the daylight.

"Shar was quite displeased with her deathbed convert," Viconia said. "She selected an appropriate punishment to make the soul of our halfling Blackguard stand guard against the male pretender's gate for eternity. And nonetheless, she was pleased by my actions." Viconia shoved Fentan's body off the altar, not without effort; let it fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes besides the ranger's rotting corpse. It wasn't more ceremony than she'd have shown to him if he'd died; and he'd do the same to the Sharran when she got herself killed on some fool scheme for picking up converts. Toss the wench aside and kick her for good measure.

There was a circle drawn on the altar that Montaron would have sworn hadn't been there before: purple-edged, black. Her symbol.

"It is Shar's temple now," Viconia said.

"—One of the nasty mean ones," Xzar said, "turn everything to void and expect you to thank them for eating your skin—"

"Unwise to speak against my lady in her shrine, apostate," Viconia told him, leaning against her altar. "I learned wisdom from Shar while I consecrated her temple: Amaunator is a dead god of the sun." She pointed to the ghost. "A male deity of the sun is long dead, and the Lady of the Night endures. Shar is eternal."

"Lord Amaunator _is_ dead," Amauna said, tears on her cheeks. "I wish you had never come to this place."

"Gods are dead," Xzar said. "The void would exist without her. Therefore why—? But now is not the time..."

Viconia glared scarlet at him.

"You're all bones," he said to the little girl's ghost, "you could run through the thorns and see..."

Both of them shoved themselves into the black wall, sharp points scraping across the wizard's skin; disappearing into the tangle. _Mask_, Montaron thought or whispered, he said enough to the patron of thieves that he wouldn't wind up in the Nine Hells, but he didn't mess with gods and priests. Ye shouldn't borrow trouble. Most Sharrans had the half-a-grain o' common sense that kept what they were hidden; the drow had learned some since last time. When she'd been running alone from the Flaming Fist she'd really liked to spill how a surface deity had her.

"Going to set up housekeeping here?" he snarled. She'd kept some of the shadow-creatures, standing around the altar.

"I might...show the village some things," Viconia said. "What would you like to do with them, halfling?"

"Hurt them for sending us on this mad job," Montaron said. He'd not meant to be so honest about it. The town sheep sent them up here to bleed and die for them.

"Don't think that I do not have plans," the drow said, and with a sway of her hips pushed the door loose. Beyond in the dragon's chamber was empty tiled floor, though it looked like black dust had blown across it: Montaron saw the shape of a fallen dragon with outstretched wings. Above the ceiling was black glass. "It should have been cleaned, at least a little, for its new mistress."

"That'd be your deity. Not ye," Montaron reminded her.

"Of course." She flicked back her pale hair, walking safely below the dark roof. Neither of them needed light to see. Back to the rockfall, and tarlike Sharran shadow-figures lifted away the obstacles in their path. An old statue of a male figure lay in fragments on the ground, and in a wall Shar's dark circle had materialised. Around it were faint triangles carved into the stone as if the old symbol had been something like noonday sun. Montaron scrambled up and over the rubble ahead of Viconia; still better than stupidly forcing yourself through thorns. He landed easily on his feet, kicking aside the remains of the undead they'd fought. The walls looked a touch cleaner, dusty but not like they were moving in on you any more with their fool shadows. Coffins were flung everywhere and empty, like their corpses had gone away to dust. All clear here, with a few wolflike shades reflected on the stones like the dragon's shape had been.

"_Wait_ for me," the drow snapped, throwing dust off her cloak. "How do you know I did not send servants to attack your insolence?"

"Didn't think ye that powerful. Nothing here I couldn't have beaten up one-by-one," Montaron said, damn them all and stab them in the kidneys where it counted.

"Sharrans make only rare sacrifices of blood," Viconia said, "we are ordered to slay the servants of the Moon Bitch on sight, but we favour...subtle means for most. The Spider Queen does pointless baths in blood; Shar is different. Live prisoners set to quiver in interesting ways. Though I have met few other Sharrans. Loneliness is part of existence." Start as a threat; go on to whining again. Or boasting. Some folk didn't know when to leave ye alone and shut up...specifically, if they were mad wizards called Xzar.

"Ye did well here, in the end," he told her, for they were living and the enemy dead, and no parts missing.

They walked out to find the mage; Zhent command had it that Montaron needed to waste his time keeping the fool alive. This one they'd note only as a bit of mercenary work, and the deaths of two Harpers. Yeah, that'd make the higher-up bastards sit up and take note. Mad Xzar was the wizard from the Keep but they rewarded talent when they noticed it.

Outside the sun burst in waves of white fit to blind and drown him. Montaron squinted with a hand shielding his face and saw nothing the same as when they'd got there. Hadn't been trapped underground that long, not some crazy magic that took them someplace else—

It was green and gold, broad daylight, trees growing like summer instead of black half-dead canopies, grass and flowers springing out between stones and in the woods. The prism-statue's spot was still there, but the thing itself was split into glass shards scattered on the ground. He couldn't say he'd miss it.

"The light burns," Viconia complained, "and pesky surface _nature_ dares to grow again. But Shar rules in the temple."

Ye could see where the altar-spot was, now, from above where the light had been blocked before: a black sphere above the temple, guarded by that thick growth. Ye could still tell it was a sun-god first, Montaron gloated without telling it to the drow, for it was above-ground and they said Shar objected the same as the Shade Lord to light; but some dead god of the sun didn't matter either. And the mad wizard and his crazy necromantic creation of the ghost-girl were sitting further out in the woods in broad daylight that glinted off her bones.

"...And then Mister Sun went to the house, and said, 'Do you want to have a tea party'?"

Amauna held up a round piece of bark, roughly tied together with pieces of sticks that gave it head and limbs like a doll. There was another piece of stick in the mad wizard's hand, long and smooth except at the top and base.

"And Miss Fibula said, 'Of course with crinkled crepe,'" Xzar said, and shifted his figure next to the sun's. Scraped and bloodied and dirty, and he grinned like the maniac he was. "Then they walked crossways to the tea room..."

"And had two cups of acorn tea," Amauna said, lifting a pair of acorns that must've fallen from the spreading oak above her head. Take out one Shade Lord and ye got a...garden. More of a forest. Seemed tangled enough to be natural, the right colours for the warm season and thick dirt underfoot; even worse than the dark place it had been at first. "With lots of honey. Like the sun's colour."

"Would you take honey in your acorn tea, Mister Sun?" Xzar said. There was even a garland of wilting flowers around his head, and the same over Amauna's skull.

"Yes, please, lots," Amauna said. "And would Miss Fibula like some more lotus in her cup?"

"Freak," Montaron said at the mad mage.

"Sun-worshipper," Viconia criticised.

They saw the ghost and the necromancer stand up, leisurely; Amauna looked back toward the temple.

"You ruined everything," she said. "And you made me into this. My father didn't raise me. He gave me to the temple.

"By the law of Amaunator, for dark magic and heresy I sentence you to the darkness of you, Xzar. For eternity. My father never made daisy-chains with me. You separated me from Amaunator and made me undead."

"Silver dust," Xzar said. "Invert it—make it mercury-dust. A piece of gibbering heart. It's an interesting puzzle. Add a third element. A bit of basil, that's for sunlight. Heart and soul and memory, flare and bright and bone, banish away from the old chaining throne..."

"Please finish it," Amauna said. "You started it.'

"Get on with it," Montaron snarled; Viconia sulked, waiting around for them. The mad mage was...drawing a circle, runes around the girl's foot bones. Spilling his blood on it, glittering scarlet in the air before it hit the dirt, herbs and fool spellcasting. Then he raised his hands and started the spell. The sun beat down from above. The child in the centre smiled tearfully. And then the ectoplasm that made her shape boiled and wove itself off the bones, and white light rose from the bounds of the circle. Something like the child's yellow hair rose high to the sky, spreading into the air and dissolving; and then there was an explosion that brought it all down. The skeleton imploded into a cloud of bone dust. Montaron was half-deafened by it and went to a coughing fit.

"It worked," Xzar said, brushing away daisy-chain and dust from his face. "Interesting necromantic experiment, wasn't it, Monty?" He dug down in the earth where some of the bone dust had blown. "Here, it got separated at the last from her frontal cranium. Ioun stone, Monty! Wear it floating around your head and it'll help you focus better."

"Maks ye look like a complete tit, and also like a wizard which means they try to kill you first," Montaron said, and Viconia held out her hand for the bounty. He checked on Valygar Corthala's head to make sure it was still there to make the other claim, and headed back to Imnesvale at a fair pace.

"You're both utterly filthy," Viconia said. Town-lights beckoned them for the evening, an inn and a meal even if he had to slit throats for it. They stepped across the bridge above the mill stream.

"Your mouth is open. Don't spoil it," Montaron said. The drow stopped right there.

"Do you _know_ I gained powers from Shar in her temple, pitiful little man? Do you understand not to talk back to a powerful female?"

"Do ye hear that, Xzar? Something's flapping its lips like a crippled chicken." He could forelock-tug with the best of them if the case called for it with a shit-eating grin wide as anyone's—_why yes, Lord Zhent, humble halfing servant here to swallow the crap ye expect us to take, what shiny turds ye have, sir—_but not to her. "Ye'd kick anyone fool enough to lick your boots, lady, so I'll ask ye kindly to do the same for my arse."

"I _command_ you," Viconia hissed, and then he found himself standing on the bridge's wide rails, staring into her black face and the white hair streaming back behind her. "Jump into the water."

"Silly, Monty," the mad mage was saying, "she got you under her casting, but I'm thinking past it..."

Then the vague force stopping his brain snapped back the moment he hit the cold water, and then with something like a mace blow to the solar plexus the mad wizard was flung down with the same effect. The water rushed over both of them and Montaron ran a hand over the mud in his face.

"It's very cold," Xzar said, splashing idly. The dirt on Montaron's armour fell away; the water was too deep for him to touch bottom. "Monty, Miss DeVir's mean, isn't she? Really mean. She thinks it's fun to make live people wriggle on the end of a hook. She's a lot like you."

"You're the one who animates kids," Montaron snarled, thinking of hurting things.

"Yes. But she's religious about it. That's all right, though. The three of us are our own small family," Xzar said, and promptly went into a dead man's float where he pretended not to hear a word Montaron swore at him, heavy robes waterlogged below him.

—


	7. Rendezvouses

_Warning_: Chapter contains violent sexual content. No carrion crawlers or common barnyard animals were harmed during the writing process. May belong on the Baldur's Gate version of Weeping Cock. Skipping to the phrase "sakphul slave" goes past the scene in question (no, really).

—

"I'm one of the _good_ ones," Viconia said, tugging at her neckline and on strategically placed tears in her dress. "I fled the Underdark for...for nourishing a human infant as if it were my own; feeding the poor thing my own milk..." She illustrated the task. Elven women all had small dugs but Montaron doubted she'd ever nursed.

"Poor child," the mayor said avuncularly.

"I...I wished to aid your village before revealing myself, that I might be trusted, for I know the ill reputation of my people," Viconia went on with her filcher's flim-flam. "Please forgive my slight deception! I have wanted only to do good and help kind people such as yourselves!"

"There, there, dear. You'll be quite safe in our town," the mayor's wife—a generous old lumpy thing with the figure of too much sausage in bright red wrapping, grey curls under a plain scarf on her head. Not even bright enough for jealousy. Montaron fingered the end of his wet blade.

"Imnesvale is poor in coin—" the mayor said. Montaron glared at him, and moved a step closer. "But we have other items to offer you, as we promised. A jewel, one of value from an adventurer daughter of the town; a suit of armour that I believe would fit you, madam. Its enchantment is worth a high cost. Would you care to come and try it on?"

"And," the mayor's wife said, patting Viconia's shoulder with a meaty hand, "I'll see if we can find any clothes of mine that can be altered to fit you. Poor dear, you must be frozen half to death. Perhaps something in a soft pink, with a ruffle or two..."

Viconia barely managed to suppress the look of horror on her face. "Oh, thank you, kind sir and madam," she said, refusing to spit the words, "you are most generous despite my dark skin. Your warm welcome makes me almost—sob—"

"Come on, mage, leave the lady her privacy," Montaron said, pocketing the jewel carefully away. He'd already slit open the bottom of the mayor's coin purse and grabbed enough gold to pay for dinner.

"The Cowled Wizard," Xzar said. "Monty, I've run out of spleens and I could do a lot with some livers. Do you think when we deliver him the head, I should ask for his daughter's hand? In a literal sense?"

—

He'd chatted to the Cowlie and picked up the reward for Corthala himself; got the mad mage out of poking and prodding Jermien's laboratory and making suggestions on the iron golem he was trying to build. (Mages were fools. A bit of grease on the floor and a knock to the leg and that thing'd be down and helpless as an overturned tortoise.) Then settled the mad mage with a history-book to read and a glass of milk; and got to a room of his own. They'd taken a couple days to walk back. Travellers must've noticed that the shadows were clearer and moved on, or taken the long way down south for heading up to Trademeet. Now there was another town that might be ripe for the pickings, merchants' place with plenty of travellers to hide between.

And he'd hired the barwench for one of Xzar's platinums; too much for a whore, but he'd get his coin's worth one way or another. Girl was a young fool of a human, not the cringing babbler the first time they'd come but a bolder one, with a balcony on her chest sized enough to hold a bardic circus or two; he liked 'em womanly, something to hold onto. Times like these, ye had a few desperate for coin, and then there were the sort who'd take advantage of that.

A sway of her hips below her thin skirt, and she closed the door behind her. "Get on with it," he said.

She was kneeling on the floor below the bed with her curly hair falling over her face, warm and wet and half-decent at using her mouth. He'd had better but a man didn't complain at a pair of choke-pearing lips. The globes of her arse wriggled below her back and he thought of the next moves.

The door opened on him; and Viconia DeVir went to ruin his night. The wench lifted her head from where it was, and screamed out that it was a drow; then made a mad dash below Viconia's raised arm. The drow sidled in, leaning back against the wall. In courtesy to her he didn't trouble to tie his breeches again.

"Do you like my new armour?" she said, all throat, spreading her body. All in overlapping black that clung to her chest like another skin, kirtle that ran past her knees, well-oiled and gleaming by some enchantment. Her holy symbol nestled openly in its front as if the bodice had been sewn on purpose for it. "Minister Lloyd...helped me to fit it."

"Kind of him, I'm sure," Montaron said, still hard as a poker. "Care to finish what ye drove away?"

She unfolded herself from the wall and leaned over him. "I was bored," she said, "and curious on how adaptive your endurance." She sat down, stretching herself on the bed. "Once I had a halfling slave who lasted an hour in my bed. Perhaps I used too much of the whip and did not trouble to heal him. He died for boring me." Her thighs flashed bare under the armour, and she pulled the bodice aside, drawing the eye to her breasts. She stopped just before the nipple, teasing and tormenting.

"Make up for what ye lost me," Montaron said, "on the floor."

"You'll give obeisance next, I promise," she said, moving as if she'd an itch to scratch in her nunnery. "Never forget my commands."

"What was it, coin toss between me and the mad wizard?" he said. "Ye came to the right one."

"You're correct that I—deprived you of a service," Viconia said; and then she did exactly as asked, dropping to her knees while he sat on the edge of the bed. "This encounter once and only once,_ sakphul_, hmm? We'll see how long you survive." He was waiting for her to stop the talk and get on with it, and then she took him into her mouth. She used her teeth as if she threatened to bite it off, and her eyes burned red up at him. He didn't find himself caring for her consideration. She'd a courtesan's tricks, moving back and forth, nipping with shocks of pain. Then he pulled the dagger from his sleeve and held it to the skin of her neck. Viconia glared at him, red-brown eyes alive with anger, and grunted some indistinguishable words around his shaft; she wasn't talking now. The pace became faster and her teeth bit deeper, not yet piercing skin. She could harm him as much as he.

"Test how long I last, bitch," he said, distracting himself, mind on holding back. The violence had her going, fighting him with the knife by her skin. _Little man_, he knew she'd be calling him between her gulping, and yet he wasn't. He'd show her—match her fury and spill into her, furnace-hot and burning. If she kept doing _that_ she'd win, and triumph lit up her face as her tongue wrapped around him—

—

Being a cleric meant she'd flung a healing spell or two on him after. She'd not needed to cast any restorations, and he took pride in that. And she wasn't even down here. Montaron moved his still-bruised shoulders and got up on a seat by the mad mage, calling for something to get his strength back. _Strong enough to last me, sakphul slave, don't dare play the eunuch with me—_ He hadn't. Xzar sat reading his book.

"Did you know, Monty, in 1258, Zhentarim working in Darkhold discovered the first way to weaponise Hands of Glory?" Xzar carried on. "Really rather sophisticated enchantments, at least for the time. You'd animate them and add a polymorphic mentality twist. A very interesting history of our order. I've been divining on it." He tipped back his chair and hummed like he was trying to make some mystery-production from it. Under the table he pointed to the bookseller, a tall weedy human with a face like a cat's rear end who glanced nervously around every so often.

Montaron stared across the room, triumphant that the drow hadn't dragged herself down yet. A lady half-elf who'd tried to sell trinkets, counting over her wares and gimcracks not worth the dipping. Pack of kids pestering the stockboy, and glancing at the adventurers as if they were gathering up courage to step over and ask what it was like to go down damp dungeons hazardous to life to fetch up blood and muck for yourself. Brats always thought it was funny.

Xzar started talking to thin air again. Babbled: _DarsinolesindareolDarcin Cole Carcin Dole Dare sin old Darse thy soul Sine dracol Nil deco arc Calcined or Darcin Cole._ He bent down to the book's margins as if he wanted to eat the paper. He sung to himself, and it worked handy to unnerve the village brats watching. Crazy wizard wouldn't smell burning chicken feathers in front of his nose if he was thinking about something else—never noticed a damned thing.

"Darcin Cole," Xzar said loudly, flipping down the book, and walked off to the seller. "Darcin Cole! That's their name, Darsin Cole. A merry old soul."

Cat-face jumped half a mile in the air and paled like death, and Montaron got a good grip on his dagger.

"—Have you no sense?" howled the bookseller. "You know, you must know, you must be. But you are—"

"Mad?" Montaron said. "Ye get used to him."

"Oh, Monty, I didn't know you cared."

"That's it. Mad. Still, it would take..." Cole glanced in Xzar's face, and might've decided to be a coward. "Come to the outhouse, separately. We'll talk." He swept up his books like a hurricane and stuffed them into his bag.

"Until we meet again, Darcin Cole!"

"Do ye have any idea what that was about, mad mage?" Montaron said, the smell of cooked meat behind them. Time to hold the crossbow ready.

"Of course not, Monty, I just divined his name from his book. It's written in all of the margins in between recto and verso, in the middle of the folios' caliper." Xzar flung the book into the air, managing to make it land in the folds of his robe. "He _must_ be up to plots and plans."

"Some people just aren't up to any good," Montaron said, testing a bolt's sharpness in his hand. "Ye can't trust anyone these days. Cruel shame, it is. We could just leave him be, or shoot him in the back..."

"Or I could _find out_," Xzar said. "Behind me, Monty."

Place stank of the pigs and chickens the innkeeper kept out the back. Montaron crept into a dark corner to get aim at the twitchy bookseller. A moment later the mad mage walked in, whistling, ambling over to Darcin Cole like he'd happened to bump into him.

And what they were talking about sounded like some freak's combination of alchemy and sewing. Xzar showed a patch on a tear of his robes to make some point, and then started muttering about reagents; Darcin Cole passed him over a scroll with some mage-lettering to put away. Rabbit-twitchy, that man, worse than the mad mage, and Montaron kept the crossbow trained on his back standing in what smelled like pig crap.

Then Cole jerked back. "You have spoken what should not be spoken!" he said. "You are not my contact—" His arms came up to spellcast. Montaron loosed the bolt into his back. It was just when the potboy had come out, too; lanky young longlimb slack-jawed and gaping. Cole's back turned stone in that instant before the bolt struck, and it stuck in but didn't bring him down. "I'll—I'l show you what it means to cross us—" Montaron was already up and rushing away from the mage's next target; spell-fiddlers could spread stuff everywhere but a quick move could stab them beforehand. Green fire spewed out of Cole's hands: the mad mage, blast him, jumped out of the way and the potboy screamed. Montaron stabbed, then felt himself flung against the far wall like a giant hand'd slapped him back. He heard the crack of his skull hitting wood.

Then the mad wizard was kneeling and snivelling. "But, Mister Darcin Cole, please—I was a devotee! I've always looked up to your work since I was little! Can you have the heart to punish an aficionado?"

"Yes," Cole said, gathering himself for another spell. "The Twisted Rune brooks no—!"

Then the air changed. Three figures came, air popping to make space for them. Hulking orcblood, short elf, tall lanky and—not quite human, not moving right—? They hadn't seen him. Rune—heard the name, Zhentil high-ups, kill the mad wizard later—

"Darcin Cole. You speak a name you should not," Montaron heard. The three raised their hands; then three upright lines, black and purple and blue, split Cole's body to four pieces.

"No witnesses," the one who wasn't human said, and then more of the villagers started to scream.

"You're a vampire," Xzar said, pointing to the woman, something bright kindling in his hands. Above her, a hole he'd torn in the roof was lit gold.

"Spells protect me, meat," she snarled, and then the necromancer pulled off throwing his spells at her. Sunlight rained from the roof as if it was midday instead of morning and she burned to a crisp. Montaron ran past the shadows, gathering some of the natural resources of the area, and launched a wet handful to the eyes of the short one. Finicky elf, hadn't bothered to protect against commoner ways of blinding. Montaron hacked a line through his kidneys, bloodying him, and the orcblood with the finger-pointing hand for a deity's symbol still hadn't lifted up his flail. The caster chanted. The mad wizard stepped over the bloodsucker's ashes and flung missiles at the priest. They didn't even scrape the hide. The elf below Montaron writhed and struggled, death-throes and mage-triggers coming to him. Shove a hand down the throat, step on the fingers, slash deeper in the guts to stop the casting before it took—

Viconia's voice joined, slightly out of breath, waving her hands and crying out while the mad wizard tried ineffectively with his dagger. Powerful casting out of the orcblood, Montaron knew as he flung himself off the stilled elf and started hacking. There were shields around the greenskin that stopped even Corthala's knife, and there'd be no chance left to run.

The drow finished first. She pointed a finger and slipped forward clutching her stomach, and something in the air around the priest unravelled. He roared. Then fast as lightning his thick flail swung around, clearing a wide-open path. He started another casting, but his face changed and his tusks clenched together. The mad wizard was too far back, but Montaron got under the chain, and this time he sliced a line in the thick skin. The orcblood cursed, and grabbed the elf's body with right hand raised for a different spell.

They were blinked-out, gone and not invisible-lurking by the lack of sudden death. Things were on fire, half the village was up and screaming, and not far from them was a bookseller's body in four linear slices and the potboy's black corpse.

"_Dos naut tlu iblithen? Waelen, waelen, waelen, vith'ir zatoasten_—" Viconia screamed out. "I leave you free from my command for bare _hours_ and you do—"

Yeah, score one drow, one tattooed necromancer, and a bunch of corpses and there weren't much that fast mouth-flapping could do to get you out. "Mad wizard? Throw a sleep spell. Or better yet one of those clouds," Montaron snapped. Bought 'em a few moments from the mob getting out their pitchforks.

"—I had plans for this place. Beautiful, dark plans of my lady," Viconia said, and behind her on the wall of the outhouse a shadow detached itself from the dark, exactly as those ones in the temple. "The mayor is a Sharran. How did you think he gave me this armour of the night? Darkness to Imnesvale, darkness anywhere in the world that we go—"

"The Rune," Montaron said through gritted teeth. "Bloody group of liches and mages strong enough for the likes of those three to get together. Got to lose them in our tracks, get out and make sure they never find us."

"Got to find the blood of a silver dragon." The mad mage's hair streamed wildly around his face in the light and he failed to give anything useful to them. "Darcin Cole gave me a necromantic recipe for potent flesh armour. Splendid research—I could just kiss you, Monty. Both of you!"

"Nine Hells, no, freakshow!"

"_Nec'perya, sanctuary_," Viconia snarled, and not long after that they were running out of town with the weapons and clothes on their backs. Imnesvale faded from view among the trees, first a blur of far buildings and then only a bit of smoke rising above the branches, and then almost nothing.

"My shadows," Viconia whispered back in Imnesvale's direction, "_kill_." She closed a dark grey fist on thin air.

—


	8. Rune Runners

"—And you can _forget_ finding your way to my bedroll, _ever_ again!" Viconia said, throwing a tin cup to the stones by him.

The Twisted Rune were a group of Calimite lamp-buggerers who didn't like folk knowing they existed; from time to time they wanted something the Zhent higher-ups disagreed on, and they'd fight. Or get in bed with each other against the likes of the Harpers or surfacer pointy-ears. He'd only eavesdropped on the name once or twice; knew enough not to tangle with it. Xzar'd more tattered tales he knew or made up from his madness.

"I'm not afraid of the _Dewiest Runt_," the mad wizard said. "They're powerful and they have the invisible limbs of a thousand millipedes...but I've not met them before. I'm a necromancer now." He shook his head. "What was that about you and Montaron?"

"None o' your business. Mage, set up a shield," Montaron said. "No sense in pulling it without a bit of rest." They'd found their way to a shallow cave in a hillside, where the bloody forest grew thicker. He'd already checked it for beasts and found only bats' guano.

"Trademeet," Xzar said slowly, sketching shapes in the dirt with a stick. "That's quite near, isn't it?"

"Don't ask me. I neither know nor care of your surfacer incompetent settlements," the drow said.

"Remembered now I forgot to thank ye before, your ladyship," Montaron said, faux-politely, "if not for you we'd lie dead by the Rune already. Tremendously kind and generous of you for that casting."

"I'll pack your wounds with salt the next time I heal them. It will cause you less pain than my present annoyance." She dragged herself up to sit by the wizard; giving signs it'd taken a lot out of her.

"Trademeet. Caravans to and fro, Amn and...south, isn't it, Monty? South to—well, the land of the _tides' wet urn_. And besides they'll expect us to go to ground. You have to do opposite of the rabbits thinking what you'll do," the mad wizard said. Lines grew from him in the dirt. "On the other hand, Trademeet is also the place for northern travellers bound south. In all the unrolled dispatches I ate. Monty, they'd help us—or more probably wouldn't, but I think we should ask." He sounded almost in control of himself; but then added, "And the trees will stop moving on us and changing places."

"Northern travellers?" Viconia said. "What is meant by that?"

"Zhents are but a humble organisation of peaceful merchant traders, ye see," Montaron said; he flicked a silver coin up in the air, and spun it further with the point of a dagger. "Some who bring all sorts o' goods, some stored under the caravan's floorboards and some not; nothing wrong with crossing trade routes, after all. Like as not they'll be useful to us as a piss in a storm, but the town's big enough to hide in, at least until the Rune decides to catch us up. Sometimes they like to take their time, when they're undead or pointy-ear."

"One of my sisters was offended by a duergar once," Viconia said. "She took him prisoner and allowed most of his clan to live, which we thought was weakness. But she owned a ring of regeneration, and each year on the day of his offence she ordered a pile of the duergar's limbs to be delivered to his clan's doorstep. For four hundred and twelve years. Time is a friend to we drow."

"I've seen those used in cellars below the Keep," Montaron said. "Doesn't surprise me."

"Then one night I freed the duergar from his chains and convinced him to assassinate my sister, and slew him afterward to leave no witnesses."

"The _Trusted Wine_ are long of time, but others can walk through it," Xzar said. "Have you heard of the winged stone statues that open their eyes? They end time for you by forcing you into the past, and thus with you dead they eat everything you could have been..." Xzar said, and they gave the madman no heed. Stories like that were mad ravings. "Trademeet, perhaps, Monty. Submit our reports for once."

"Fine, mad mage," Montaron said.

Viconia walked over to face Xzar, and lifted a hand slowly to touch his jawline. "Sometimes I say I want a thing only once," she said, meaning Montaron to hear it, "and sometimes I...change my mind. You have noticed me, necromancer, I know it." She added another hand, reaching along the mage's ribs, the sensitive spots between them. "What do you think of me?"

She'd said outright to him that she only wanted it once, and he'd still got the bruises. A milksop would sit around and whine; Montaron waited to see what she'd do to the wizard.

"You remind me," Xzar said cheerily, making no attempt to brush her away, "Of... —When I was a young apprentice one of my older compatriots thought it would be amusing to use me as bait for a spell to summon a succubus into a pentagram with me," he began. "I'm afraid I disagreed with the theory, or it disagreed with me, and it hardly forms the most heartwarming tale of innocences lost," Xzar said, speaking slightly more quickly. Normal men would've boasted of bedding one of those. "You remind me of that demon, my lady, though she would have no recourse but to envy you." Viconia preened at that.

"Or, in short: I know better," Xzar finished, pushing her back at last, disentangling himself thoroughly. She scowled and tossed her hair, leaning forward with a line of bare skin crossing her chest where her tunic had come undone.

"Perhaps too young to _appreciate_," she flung back, and it still applied now; in halfling's years the mad mage was a boy and none so old in human either, to drow in particular. Seen things in short enough time to make him madder than a gibbering mind-blasted Strifeleader of the Black Sun. "I admit human slaves of undeveloped years gave me little pleasure."

"Shame, that," Montaron agreed nastily. "Ye'd be worth at least a silver on the market. I'd've paid at least five copper more for ye to wear a gag to stop your mouth all the way during it, but nobody complains about a free service."

"Ignore your ape," Viconia said firmly, and added a new tight grip on Xzar's shoulders. "You have noticed me, I know, jaluk, at times between your insanities. Coward? Inadequate?"

"—Understanding of the fourteenth and fifteenth letters of the alphabet," Xzar said, as if he wasn't so scared of her. He detached himself again. "Mad, not foolish. Also, you don't much like magic."

"Dream of the dark desires I could have sated," Viconia said. She raised a hand as if to slap the mad wizard, but lowered it. She'd wanted—Xzar was the one who reported to Zhentil command; head-turn both of them at once, or rather groin-leading. Montaron could've cackled over the madman's reaction, but stopped himself. The mage snapped his fingers for a light to read his spells, and Viconia peeled off her boots to fling them far away.

"How long will this trip through foul conditions of the primitive trees last?" she demanded.

"Fiveday at most," Montaron told her.

—

They were woken on the freezing morning of the fourth day by bandits.

_S'posed to be the drow on watch._ Whined about the rain in the day, the prayers she'd had to cast to keep herself warm and dry, then she'd got the last.

"Psst! Hey. Hey there. Rise and shine now, gentlemen. Oh, I hope I didn't disturb ye. My, boys, but we've got sound sleepers here. Did'nay hear us wee little bandits and now look at this mess."

"Get your filthy hands off me, rivvil! Get—" Viconia's voice was choked off by the garrotte around her neck. There were bows aimed at them; Montaron calculated, a reach for the crossbow and getting to the oak tree for half a shield, one of Xzar's quick spells getting off.

Wasn't even as if they were sitting on much in the way of obvious coin, and the skinny longlimbs looked desperate enough. The one with the drow'd elected himself speaker.

"See the sharp little pinker by your dark elf's neck? I'd not like to let it slip. Pretty thing, isn't she? Wouldn't be so pretty if this sharp thing carved her a second mouth."

"—Foul rivvin—I did nothing—" Viconia was cut off, struggling in the wire. Bird in a trap.

"So we'll ask ye nicely to hand over your trinkets, and then we'll all be going on our way. No quick moves, if ye don't mind. Sometimes my hand's a touch shaky, y' see, and the knife wants to have its way. No doubt ye'd hate it if she bit it."

"—I'd offer ye the mad wizard's sexual favours for a thank-you, in fact, but ye don't seem the type," Montaron said, keeping his hands away from weapons.

"_Slaves_!" Viconia shrieked in a ragged voice. "Traitorous male slaves!"

"Oh. Bit of a misunderstanding, eh?" the man said. Xzar opened his mouth.

"Not a word out of ye, wizard, lest these gents think you're spelling," Montaron said quickly. "Look, humans, there's things ye must know; she took us out of the Underdark for surface cover—spelled and potioned so we wouldn't know the way there or back. A—twoday or so from the dark elves' home, I guess. Perhaps the mage and me could join up with you fellows."

"Turn bandit?"

"Beats slave to drow," Montaron said. Xzar nodded frantically.

"Almost anything does," the mad wizard said, "down in the dark, mad hands reaching for you. You shatter to save yourself for control, and they chain you still. Don't send us back to the—" He chewed on his nails, all fright. It helped support the sort of story they told.

"What an offer. A finger-wiggler and a little one. Can you fight?"

"Have for years."

"Share one for all, goods and food?"

"Fine by me."

"Stand and come with us, on trial. In Ertof Dand's group, it be all even-equal."

Amateur bandits. The four bowmen let out a ragged cheer. They'd be butchered in a few minutes flat against Zhentilar.

"Probably a reward if ye drag her to the nearest town, wherever that is; or ask her about the invasion plans," Montaron said. "I remember shelves laid with shiny drow enchanted weapons, not far back from where she took us to scout. If an army of them comes up to raid in the dark..."

He'd baited the hook; see how bright the poor saps were.

"I lost two of my brothers to drow," one of the bowmen snapped, his hands shaking. "—Could get a reward; could stop them from coming up."

"They said they didn't know where the Underdark cave was, only she did," a younger bandit said.

"These weapons," Dand said, holding the wire tight around Viconia's neck. "How...well-guarded would you say they were?"

"Usual for drow, strong patrols from Underdark direction against their drow buddies. Won't ye be taking us to the town?" Montaron continued; the more a mark felt they were leading you, the less suspicious they were. "Dand, sir—mind if I call ye Dand? Best to give the warning, and ye'll have the reward to earn our part as bandits among ye."

"I think we scout first," Dand said slowly. "Say, if'n the drow wouldn't be expecting surfacers to come thataway; and if you can lead us once the drow shows us her entrance..."

"They're magic weapons the drow use on the surface," said one of the men, "obsidian-black and glimmering with ice and fire, terrible and powerful. A few of those and in the night everyone in Amn'd fear our gang."

"Fine," Montaron said. "If ye get to the town, and listen to us and don't tarry in places ye shouldn't go. You're right, Dand," he said like he didn't want to admit it, "they're not protecting against humans 'cause they don't think humans are going to know about it. But it's awhile since we saw surface, and we'd rather stay above it."

"And prevent the suffering of others in the same dreaded fate!" Xzar chimed in, posing like some holy knight. "I say, if you want slaves, make yourself some zombies."

"Agreed," Dand said, and pulled at Viconia. "Hear that, drow lady? You get to live by telling us where ye came from—and your men join with us. Deal's on as long as you sweet-talk us and tell the truth," he said, and the men joined him laughing at her.

Dand, six-foot Tommen the Midget, Snagtooth Jack, Young Dalsin, Redbeard Jaregard. A low-ranked guardsman turfed out for thieving, three farmers who'd lost land, and a runaway carpenter's prentice. There'd been a few more in the band who'd died in their incompetent robbery. They tore into Montaron's supplies without caring to save for later, suffering from not enough food.

"This the right way, drow lady?" Dand teased her, grinning as if he was full-bellied for once. They'd shared Montaron's one vial of Imnesvale ale, partying well. He'd refused it, himself. "Two days, your men say," Dand said. "If'n we're not there in time, the more we hurt ye. Understand?"

"Understood well enough, _rothe_," Viconia said coldly. She was the same as they'd done to Fentan, tied up on the ground. The smallest of the humans had slipped her armour off her and stretched it out over his shape.

"Roth. What's that?" Dalsin said, red-cheeked from that small amount of booze; couldn't so much as hold his ale. "Calling us names?"

"Drow bitch," Snagtooth said, "drow whore. I know what all your kind does to people."

"You're inferior and cowardly fighters," she snapped out, "_nadorhuanel yeunnen torthusen_."

"Not so strong yourself," Jaregard said, "bound as ye are—let me make sure—"

"Don't dare to lay a hand on me," Viconia said, kicking out as he went to her with a dirt-encrusted gag. The five of them were around her, hurting her, Snagtooth grabbing a tit; and there was genuine fright in her face, Montaron would have sworn to it.

The mad wizard had looked over his book this night. This would be easy. And Xzar was already starting forward.

"_Turn rust and wither_!" he shrieked the spell, and by then Montaron's blade had already carved Dand's tendons into fancy ribbons of meat. The wouldbe-bandits' weapons shrivelled, they barged into each other on the way, and too soon they were dead. No pesky bows to back them up. Montaron drew the blunter end of the blade across Ertof Dand's throat.

"There. Wasn't the wild bluegull chase easier than begging 'em not to hurt the lady?" Montaron said, setting the drow free. She chanted spells to heal herself first.

"Nobody likes people who touch without asking," Xzar said, and muttered a necromantic incantation over the burned body of the Midget. "He'll make an excellent zombie. Carry our materials. Eye, nerve, skin, flesh—very useful on experiments upon the dead."

"I will have that armour cleaned before I wear it once more," Viconia said. The kid who wore it had been hardest to kill; but it didn't cover the knees, and that was his mistake. "Carry it for me, male."

"I would not have been able to tell the fools the way to the Underdark in any case," she said, sitting by the bandits' fire amidst their corpses, not looking at either of them while she spoke. "When I left...the Spider Queen had seized power from me in one swift knifestroke. I felt blind and stumbling through the tunnels of home. I was born to be a priestess, and the Queen of the Demonweb Pits was with me for above six hundred years. I rose to an archpriestess, strong enough to burn anyone with fire from the underworld in moments, arm undead the size of giants and set them against my enemies.

"Then I might as well have been a stumbling surfacer with no prayer or magery within me, nothing but my skin to shield me from spells and blows."

Exactly how the likes of him existed each day, Montaron thought. Nothing between him and blows but blade and skill, and he liked it that way.

"The Spider Queen had me lose the drow's gifts. I was crippled and blinded in the maze of shadows I fled to escape. But in the darkness Shar found me and gave me the will to survive," Viconia said. "I emerged in lands of endless sand. Calimshan, it was called, but the male was a traveller bound north. He spared me from goln who sought to end my life; and the price for my survival was the erotic arts of the drow. We females are taught to take pleasure slaves, not to live as them, but I knew the arts of it. I stroked my dark hands along his sweaty folds, tickled him artfully with my tongue, I let him exert himself wildly inside me while he bit my shoulder. Does that repulse you, kivvin? He was nigh wide as he was tall, with red fleshy thighs and a belly full of streams of yellow fat that wobbled above or below me, three oily chins on his face and missing teeth in his mouth that stank of rot."

"Yes, because you had to," Xzar said, "but it's not fair when you know we're going to say it."

"In fact I had charge of the caravan," Viconia said. "The Calishite merchant was my pawn, and I enjoyed having him as my possession. We went as I wished to colder climes where the accursed sun did not burn so cruelly. I manipulate such things at my will, which will never be a skill of either of you." She held her head high as a gallowspost and looked down her nose. "These here were males as pathetic. I deceived them each step of the way."

"Right ye are," Montaron said. "Stay awake next time on watch, will you?"

"I would still be in that caravan if the merchant had not expired of a sudden...heart attack, on top of me one night," Viconia said viciously. "Alas, the guards thought it murder and chased me away. Overexertion can indeed kill."

—

_A/N_: Dr Who reference. ;)

—


	9. Skin Speaker

_Warning_: Chapter contains violent serial killers other than the protagonists.

—

The Calimite djinn smoked and steamed in front of a tent, the gnome turnip-merchant hawked his trays, and the guards lounged incompetent on duty half falling out of chainmail stretched too thin over wide bellies. They'd walked through a stinking swamp with distant howling beasts and close-spread trees—exactly the kind of unwelcoming bloody place druids'd choose for a home—but here Trademeet's fancy glittering cobblestones invited them in. The city gates were crowded and next to a bunch of Rom they slipped in the cloaked drow and the grinning hedgewizard with barely a thought.

"Interesting," Xzar said, "there's more death in the air than I'd expected."

"And isn't that exactly what we need," Montaron said. Wood buildings, carved into a hundred different designs and thickly glazed over to prevent one little bonfire out of hand swallowing the whole town. Pretty place ye have there, would be a real shame if anything happened to it...

The hin quarter was shabby compared to what the longlimbs kept for themselves. Montaron spotted a pickpocket lurking in the streets, and led them down the sort of alleyways where folk didn't ask too many questions, and where ye heard better news on what was going on.

"—The Fentan Knights would never stand for it!" a pipe-smoking old hin called, and Montaron lost something in his throat. The Goblin's Nails were the right kind of place, dark and dingy with a few shady longlimbs and an orcblood or two, the scent of lotus faint but there if ye knew what to identify. The greybeard stood up on a table and preached his annoyances. "Lurraxol and Alibakkar, they're the same! They can't claim our lives like cattle. Nigh every night there's trouble and death, and none is done by the guards nor any other!"

"Fascinating," Xzar said softly; and when the phrase _flayed bodies_ came up it was more than past time for Montaron to keep his ears open. So the likes of Cole had picked Trademeet to flee to—for bodies without flesh were meant to be part of the armour the mad wizard wanted—

The remains lay in the Waukeenar temple's cellars, stone-lined and the stink of a cold preservation spell keeping them until it was time to lay 'em in the ground. 'Twas a home for the mad wizard, though the drow did not seem easy in it. Xzar moved among the corpses pulling them from their winding-sheets happily as a Zhent child ripping beetles' wings. Red and shapeless things they were, and that it was dark night outside for their sneaking in didn't help any. He'd've been more than happy to cause any of 'em for coin, Montaron reminded himself.

"Human, adult female, cause of death exsanguinaton caused by slit to carotid artery, trachea pierced, layers of skin removed to the hypodermis," Xzar said, his green magelight faint around him. "Halfling, adult male, apparent cause of death a clawlike stab entering below the sternum up into the chest cavity puncturing...oh, lungs and heart both—" Xzar took his hand out of the body. "Blade a half-inch or so wider, layers of skin removed to the partial hypodermis. Human, adolescent male, cause of death not obvious, layers of skin removed to the hypodermis, bloodflow consistent with flaying ante-mortem, ligature marks on wrists and ankles as if restrained, on the palms—"

Montaron could follow enough of that: killer'd tied down the kid first.

"Slight incisions of fingernail shape and size. Elements of defensive bruising; and left in the nail-marks a gobbet or two of actual skin, looking closely. Our new friend."

A struggle and the boy'd ripped out some murderer's flesh, then driven nails to his own palm in pain. Xzar nipped out something small with a pair of tweezers, looking under the nails left on the body.

"I'm going to do the spell, Monty. The last seen before their death; the nearest we find affiliates of the _Dire We Stunt_. Before they find us." The mad mage talked himself through a spell and the pale white fog flew around his face like in any of his divinations. "Talk to me!" He shook the flayed body by the throat. "Your murderer's flesh, your flayed form, behind your bulging eyeballs: speak."

The head moved. The stripped lips gaped open. The fog hissed around it. Then it changed to jagged knives and moving ribbons that might've once been parts of skin. It boiled as if something had found the mad wizard, and it weren't happy about it. Screaming'd bring down the Waukeenar; Montaron caught the drow moving the same to stop the necromancer if they had to. Sharp-shaped diamonds blew through the fog like a rushing storm, black oil stuff working through it around the wizard's head.

"Skin grated, flensed, shattered. And left behind— It's not human any more. Bone and muscle and no skin, pain, the work, inside the work. A void—and they're coming to find _us_—" Xzar's voice rose loudly. The oil and the white steamed around his face, and it looked as if it was burning him too. Monatron knocked the wizard's knees out from under him; Viconia thrust a hand into Xzar's mouth and caught him from hitting the floor. Then the cloud and the skinless body were falling after them.

Montaron saw flashes like jagged lightning strikes into him, never able to be coherent. —_Two shadows on the wet cobblestones, lunatic-dancer, knifeman in loose hides, the skin before—_

Only a puling mage-sight. He choked it off, shaking his head fiercely. The magic fell away while Viconia complained in whispers of her bleeding hand.

"—bit to bone, fool, how dare you—"

"The process," Xzar whispered, spitting drow skin, "it doesn't leave anything behind; the skin as synecdoche, the part as the whole of the person in torment; sew the self into a garment to scream forever."

"Nothing more useful than that?" Montaron said. "They find it by Alibakkar and Lurraxol to hide it. If ye can't get better than that, mad wizard, we've only to make ourselves bait. Specifically, you, tallfolk."

"I'm thinking of something now," Xzar whispered, resting a finger against the frostrime on the walls. "Something important..."

"Go ahead, jaluk."

"...That I need to write the Zhentish reports."

—

The mad mage sat over a purloined parchment of expected caravans and with pretentious black-edged vellum; and announced it was past time to seek out Zhentil backup.

"Spell components—potion components—a very nice mixture of divination-pearl-tincture, excellent thickness and concentration...vanilla?" Glass bottles were laid out on a thick black velvet rug, unlabelled.

"Improves the flavour considerably." The mistress of the caravan was a tall healthy-built surface elf, her skin a fey light blue, square-faced with witchlike silver eyes around the wide bridge of her nose. On her face were black tattoos twining on one cheek in meaningless dots and lines—not unlike the mad mage's own. "I wonder where you got your markings, wizard? Or where they were given to you."

"Very much the former," Xzar said. "The symbols we choose, to make people stay away from us... Have we ever met? Potion of healing..."

And poisons; Montaron helped himself to a mix he knew would sharpen the edge of a blade or bolt.

"You've managed to annoy the Rune and want to explain why this ought to be my problem," the elf said, taking out a pipe for herself. "Come in."

She kept her caravan littered with blankets and tapestries over every surface, tea-cosies worked in gold thread and beakers hanging with beaded scarves, the whole stinking of smoke and heavy perfumes. She'd more than her fair share of secret components, Montaron calculated; the caravan itself had much more space than showed here, probably a trapdoor under her feet; a chest-of-drawers which ended too shallowly; a porcelain tree set in too deep a pot. She cast a spell in quick businesslike tones that ought to seal against eavesdropping.

"I am Lairilow of Darkhold, apprentice to Sememmon," the surface-elf said, sitting back on a heavy pile of cushions with her feet in the air. She lit her pipe with a sandalwood tinderbox.

"My associates are Monty and Viconia DeVir of Shar," Xzar said. "Monty has his papers—or used to; Miss DeVir's officially a freelancer, but she's been very helpful."

"Montaron," Montaron said.

"There is no need to continue the disputes of our peoples here, darthiir," Viconia said. Standing, she was taller than the surface-elf reclining; otherwise, the other woman was head-and-shoulders higher. Longlimbs paid attention to such things.

"No, there's not," Lairilow said. She blew out a ring of thick blue-tinged smoke in Viconia's direction. "And fortunately for you, the Zhentarim have an interest in the prevention of the Rune from gaining powerful magical artefacts. Go take some time with Alibakkar's men, will you? Keep a watch for their murders. I'll be your backup."

"Sit around here while we get the fieldwork done, and claim the credit?" Montaron said. "Typical desk-jobber's slackness."

Lairilow's hand flared with pale yellow light and the rug he was standing on suddenly grew snapping teeth. He jumped fast off it; the mage's place was full of the same small objects that weren't possible to stab, and from the ceiling a hanging censer swung at his head.

"Keep it up and your black lotus drawer gets spilled to the guards," Montaron threatened, and slashed across eyes that had appeared on a cushion. Feathers spilled out, and then went into the censer's smoke coming after him. The smell filled the air. Lairilow coughed in spite of the pipe she'd shoved in her mouth already, and ran a hand through black-and-silver hair.

"I think you've missed one or two valid points," she said, "but I'll let it go for now." With a wave of her hand and some muttering she put down the feather-fire.

"Interestingly pliant, darthiir," Viconia said, standing between him and the mad mage as if to show that their numbers were better.

"The _Ruse Tend Wit_ has an Azuthan priest with them," Xzar said quickly. "Orc-blooded; wears the symbol. Azuth was a wizard who gave his thoughts away to kneel at Mystra's feet," he explained in Viconia's direction. "The only one of three we left hale and hearty and cheery—well, I don't suppose cheery. Below him are those who served Darcin Cole in gathering raw necromantic material. They're here."

"Kill them," Lairilow said.

—

It was the second night of running lookout on the merchantfolk scabs that screams started in the night, while it rained hard and dark. Montaron led the way; he'd scouted earlier and he knew the spots he'd pick for business meant to be clam-kept. A section of construction marked off for rebuilding, covered by orange sailcloth for the look of the thing; and then the mad mage pulled him back.

"Monty, it's shielded—can you see it now?" Some fool's spell on his eyes like infravision, and then a glowing dark blue wall rose high above any longlimb's head covering the space. "Most likely the Azuthan—divine cheating. Ways to pierce a shield are rarely other than crude; ways to bypass are over or under or sideways and crossways..."

The next-door house was derelict and disrepaired. Montaron broke the lock easily; up the stairs and to the roof for a birds'-eye view. A woman, pretty enough for a longlimb, wheat-haired and slender and carrying a short blade; the orcblood in his robes and sigil; and a man who stood there without skin, muscles flushed red with blood and bare eyes staring from his face, sharpened bones spinning out from his fingers and flapping from his back a coat that looked like the skin he was missing. Never natural. A dead skinless thing—or so it looked, or so he'd hope—lay there on the ground beside them all. Then it moved and moaned.

"—The great work nears completion, master Remzithe. Of course it does," the woman said in a man's low voice, and after the Shade Lord Montaron wasn't as surprised as he could have been at crazies who wore women's bodies like fop-boys. They spoke soft, and the mad wizard leaned half off the rooftop to hark.

"You were intercepted in Athkatla. Darcin Cole was intercepted in Imnesvale. You have failed your masters," the orcblood said. Montaron saw flickers, and then like old paint flaking off a wall he saw what the mad mage's spell had done to him: the blue wall flared again like lightning, and the woman-shaped thing and the skinless man cast long jagged shadows into the air past a sky of dead pale yellow. They danced in the night and laughed like corpses, and the skins they wore were thrust over them like blankets. Rain pelted the ground like silver needles. The figure on the ground was white as a corpse and and shapelessly screamed like a torn-up winding sheet. The orcblood was covered in layers of the same pale blue as the wall that pulsed like a fire. He saw fragments of the mad mage's wild insanity for the moment, and went for his usual sight in the dark—

"That hin bastard," the skinless one said. "_He _found me. But I am the Hidesman, and I continue my work." His shadow chopped with his knives and flayed to the pain, and behind the victim leaped up with the iron needle.

"I can't hear," Xzar whispered, and straightened up with a finger on his mouth. Then he chanted softly, as if he'd not done enough damage already. Hin bastard—Montaron knew well it weren't him—

"A halfling?" the orcblood said. "I met a male halfling; a human wizard in green; and a dark-cloaked drow. Tell me of your invaders."

The wet rooftiles started shifting below Montaron's feet, and he almost let a curse into the air at it. But none of them clattered to the ground, and below his feet the roof moved. The crazy wizard gathered the tiles together like the head of a serpent and rode it like a twisting dragon, and the real crazy thing was that in the cursed magesight it was a dragon's back; the tiles were gleaming scales in the night. They flew over and above the skindancers' heads. Up was always the last place marks looked, Montaron told himself. Viconia swayed uncertain on the dragon's back, while Xzar looked close down at the group.

"Rejiek says it was a tall shortling—oxymoronic as it is—and a human in red robes; a dark-clad human female with such pale pretty skin you never did see; and a broad human," said the skindancer who wore the woman's body.

"And death walked with our shortling," said the Hidesman, "though he did not appreciate our mission." Montaron got his hands to crossbow, one quick shot from above—the dragon bucked and writhed under his feet.

"Close enough," the orcblood said, ignoring the rain falling about him. "Enemies move in; my masters think ourselves above the Bhaalspawn mess and the pitiful guild wars; but you are near a liability to us."

"It will be completed!" burst the Moor, the skindancer in girl's shape with fen and stinking mud clinging to his long shadow. _Darsidian Moor, Moor Ran As Did I, Moor Arid As Din, Maid Ordains Or_— It weren't natural to see that. The mad wizard's magesight danced pale words around Montaron, splitting headaches. "We have one to take the blame. We have near all the flesh we need. The work shall be done."

Viconia shifted and swayed on the dragon's back as if the drow misliked being high in the air. Then a glimmering scale fell and clattered from the dragon's wings.

One of the roof tiles clattered down from the mad wizard's fool handling of it— Montaron aimed his poisoned bolts between shattering visions, knowing full well and exactly why the mad wizard was mad. The orcblood grew his blue fire in cold icy shield, and the Hidesman readied the bone knives that grew under his skinless flesh.

Xzar whipped around the dragon's tail, and it rained scales: the old bricks flew down. His aim was off, Montaron knew, he could fire it while running but with the mad mage's visions in front of his eyes he couldn't know where he shot. The poison-edged bolt bloomed like a green flower and rushed toward Moor.

"Leave me off this—this thing!" Viconia's voice rang out, and she jumped easily to the ground. "_Cretok_: I gathered enough power to once defeat—"

"And he fought you too!" Xzar cried, and the dragon rose up through the air that its scales pushed back the magebolts from the orcblood's hand in place of their flesh. "Fight the skinless ones!"

Viconia was— Ye could tell why the mad mage was part-scared of her. Her shadow was taller than her behind her ankles across the ground, and her skin was bound with night above the dull gray. Viconia DeVir was older than some hills you could name, a lightless void behind her eyes and in her heart. She cast a spell and gained strength, and then knocked back the Moor with a blow. The Hidesman raised his fingers all nails, and they flew off like steel darts that went into her back.

The mad mage rode the moving dragon and cast something that slipped like a transparent snake under the bricks below the orcblood's feet, a twining rainbow serpent trying to grow too fast for him to notice. The ride swung close enough to the ground that Montaron was set free, cursing the wizard for the sight that led him wrong. He brought up shortsword and locked into the Hidesman while the drow tried to heal herself. This wasn't the kind of fight he liked, too open and not enough of a chance to stab in the back— The mad mage kept the orcblood busy, and Montaron kept up with the Hidesman's swift nails and laid a slash across his right arm. Then there was Moor, going after the drow, and he doubled back. If'n ye were fast enough, and he got to the lower back of Moor's skin.

And curse it, he was trapped between the two of them. At last the mad mage's sight was fading and he could see for himself. Moor howled in pain and turned, and the bleeding Hidesman grew more long iron nails.

"The Zhentarim have come to perform strange dances on floors built of your calcanei!" Xzar cried, too loud—did the crazy mage have a reason?—and whipped the end of the roof-tiles he rode on just above the orcblood's head. The Hidesman grunted at that one. Montaron felt a knife driven to his left shoulder, but it kept him moving. Between the skin dancers, they both tried to sweep down hunting for him.

He didn't like a straight-up fight with two longlimbs seeking his blood, and he didn't have to make it one. Montaron had his speed go up by willpower, wanting to live through it; he'd killed many a time before. He hitched the end of the Hidesman's skin cloak around his fist, and got it twisted around the man's neck and making him fall close to Moor's blade. Some made the last mistake of thinking that short never meant strong, and besides in the right leverage ye could pull anything. The Hidesman shifted aside and the next opening was Moor's thigh. He was keeping pace with the two of them, 'tween Rejiek's knives and Darsidian's blade in the dark.

Then Viconia finally got herself up to proper spellcasting and set down Moor with dark fog finding its way to his blood. Montaron opened the throat and made sure to cut into the spine, and the skin looked as if it slipped away while the body lay still— He blocked the Hidesman with the blade in his other hand. Behind him the orcblood wasn't doing anything, staying still in the rain with the mad wizard crossing over across the wet black puddles. Then the Hidesman's small knives flew like hail to him and Viconia, and Montaron put up an arm to shield his face. The Hidesman's flesh was loose and he ran like a wet ghoul, shifting and changing to get further away.

"Necromancy commands the dead; enchantment the subtleties of the living," Xzar said to the orcblood, hand-gesturing and holding him still while he talked. "You shielded against Miss DeVir's dispelments and against the more simple and brutal forms of attack. But I know what lies in your mind, Remzithe of the _Twist End Rue_, of the god who only thinks himself master of spells; entwine that flail around your neck, and utter the second activation word."

Montaron had seen bloodier, but it pulped the orcblood's skull into a wet rain and pulled head from neck except for a thin strip of skin. In fading damned magesight the rainbow snakes slipped and faded away from the green skin...

"Hidesman's getting away, mage!" Montaron said. Moor and the orcblood were about as dead as ye could get; but there was still that screaming skinless thing in the corner that had started to writhe, and it'd be a mercy kill for him or her or whatever it was now.

Xzar nodded. "Yes, he's gone to find Lairilow, if he has any brain." The mad boy-mage brushed wet hair from his forehead, green sparks rising off his fingertips. "I don't like the way she made her furniture try to eat you, Monty. Take Miss DeVir and go rescue her?"

"Why not you?" Montaron said for the sake of it.

"Because," Xzar said, looking down at the skinless thing still crawling around on the wet ground. It reached out for Moor's body and clutched at the skin from it, moaning and whimpering. "I think I might have some sewing to do."

—


	10. Return Assignment

They tore through Trademeet's city streets, and came across more screaming. Guard on patrol had his throat half ripped out by blades, and his pal was worse: the Hidesman had torn the ribcage apart and ripped the skin and flesh in bloody pieces from his body, but unlike that skinless crawling thing he was dead and gone. Viconia bent down to the wounded one and held the parts of the man's throat together, then chanted a prayer to Shar to heal them in part.

"Which way?" she demanded, holding her black circle above his face, and she dropped his head back into the mud and dirt when he pointed. The skin torn from the other was rough and the Hidesman would still look like a monster when they found him, and then they'd kill him for all the trouble he'd caused them.

"It occurs to me," Viconia said a few moments later, panting, shaking mud from her boots and the ends of her cloak, "that if we do not—_need to_?" She laid a hand to a wall to rest a moment. Rain stuck her hair together. Montaron waited impatiently. "Your mage revealed your order to the killer, he seeks your _alur_, the one above you," Viconia counted off on her fingers. "If he slays the female, then your promotions are the same as for drow, are they not? Besides, saving a darthiir would be so tedious."

"There'd be paperwork if'n she ended up dead," Montaron said.

"So then the mage imagines a reward in rescuing her. _G'rffte tlu natha ulnar_: gratitude is a lie. Especially from superior to subordinate," Viconia said.

"Ye grasp politics fast," Montaron told her.

"Or we should chase the Hidesman down and slay him for affronting us," Viconia said, and her tongue flicked around her mouth as if she wanted to taste blood. "This weather is foul. Despise him for the inconvenience already given."

"Make up your mind."

"—This is on the surface world. I will try once your way."

—

Grateful? Not bloody likely. He'd fought and stabbed down the Hidesman's body, got it and its red-stained skins from where it had found the Zhentarim among the Trademeet merchants. Viconia cured his wounds; Lairilow poured some potion over the corpse that dissolved most of it, wrapped it in one of her carpets, and levitated it away.

"The others of the Rune are dead?" she said. "I want a full report by dawn tomorrow, curse your eyes. Any witnesses?" The elf reached for her pipe and blew an angry tide of smoke at them, puffing heavily to calm herself down again.

"Not for long," Montaron promised. What the mad mage thought he was going to do with the skinless flesh left behind—

He'd sewn Darsidian Moor's skin onto a young longlimb woman, hers all along. She had a cloak wrapped around her body and touched her skin as if she was trying to fix it in place. Xzar's long needle flashed silver as he pulled and tightened on parts of it, piecing together the gaps Montaron had opened and smoothing it over the flesh below. Sometimes he muttered spells. As damned creepy as everything else from the mad wizard.

"It's—there, now. Please, stitch it more closely at the back of my scalp—" The girl wildly pushed her fair hair aside. "He pulled it off me and his skin was crawling—and my skin is still crawling off me—"

"Their gifts lurk in you," Xzar said, using thread that looked like very thin catgut. "Call yourself Raissa Skindancer now, if you'd prefer. You can't not expect this sort of thing to change you on the inside."

"Raissa Versdaughter," the woman said. "I am Raissa Versdaughter from Tradesmeet. My father grows leeks. My mother's a washerwoman. I'm going to marry Tiris next spring—Tiris!" she cried out. "He was with me, but I think he ran away. I don't think those monsters caught him."

"Fascinating. You speak of monsters almost as if you aren't one of us," Xzar said, taking up her hand and detachedly examining the fit of the skin on her fingers.

"I'm in love with Tiris," she went on after her probably-gutless coward of some other peasant. "But how can I marry him if all I want to do is eat his skin?"

"...A more common question than you think," Viconia said, "eat your male's skin anyway once you are done with him. Often I think that all males are fit only to be hunted for sport."

"Do you know who we are?" Montaron demanded, stepping above the woman. Let the mad wizard whistle all he liked while he 'sperimented on fixing her; she'd heard him say they were Zhents and she was old enough that he'd have no trouble pulling the blade across her throat once Xzar was finished with his use for her.

She stared gormlessly up. "You k-killed the Hidesman and the other monster and saved me," she said, beginning to sob out of her eyes. Montaron couldn't have told the difference between her and someone with the skin they were supposed to be in, now; but it was cursed odd to have the shape the Moor'd worn speaking ordinary and starting to cry.

"That be correct," Montaron said, for she'd been writhing around on the ground like a worm on Xzar's little announcement. "Some folk'll say we're the criminals of Imnesvale; but it weren't us, just orcblood over there who set the blame on us." Raissa nodded as if she believed him.

If'n Xzar had one skill it was convincing innocent villagefolk to go for the torches and pitchforks and mobs to drive him off; anything to muddy the waters of their eventual hanging wouldn't hurt.

"Raissa Skindancer," Xzar repeated. "Do you feel like you could dance into _my_ skin now? How about Monty's?"

"You know too much about skin," the girl said quickly. "Your magic would stop me." She looked up at Montaron. "I might," she said. "I'd start at the feet and peel open the skin up to the abdomen, and then— No! I don't want it. I can feel everything they were inside me."

"I've learned a lot through working on you," Xzar said cheerfully, as if he was looking down at the barely-dressed woman and seeing only how he'd fastened back her skin over her bones. "There, I think that's the last thread tied off. I'm quite good at sewing. Do you want to get up and travel the world with the giftings locked inside you?"

"I want to go home," Raissa said blankly; then she looked down to realise how much she was showing and gathered her cloak further around herself. She shivered in her skin. "If I do take the skin and reach inside—_Tiris_—"

"Then come to search for us," Xzar said, his face all deaths-head grin in his sickly green magelight, and Montaron remembered the sort of things the mad mage had made him see through his eyes.

They wouldn't be in Trademeet long; and by the time the latest killer in their streets got started it would be none of their business. Pissant little town.

—

It had stopped raining at long last, and in nature-feeling Trademeet there was a pavilion and brazier out on the rooftop. Easier way back to the inn on thieves' crossings above houses than disturbing so-called decent folks' rest after they'd gone to the trouble of saving them from a pair of skinning killers. Montaron roasted a length of sausage-meat he'd been saving from a street-hawker's; smelt like the fine combination of dog and horse that might have once been within nodding distance of a pig. He let it burn blackened and piping hot. The drow's drying cloak and hair stunk far worse, but he didn't need to tell it to her. That Sharran armour was as smooth and dark as ever, as if some pesky enchantment kept the worst of the weather off her.

"Amauna the prophetess promised eternal darkness as a fate," the mad mage said, lying flat on the top of the wall and staring up into the stars like the lunatic he was. "Eternal torment, for we are willing to do monstrous things. But there are stars in the void tonight. So much magical knowledge to steal from obscurity to shining, so little time."

"There's no roof to this world," the drow said, glancing upward. "Wide impassable space. The first time I saw the night I thought at least it was gentler than your day, but the stars only remind of how great the distances. So much that lies impassable above you, and in the Underdark one hates the unknown for its ability to conceal traps. I wondered if ground-crawlers could fall from the end of the world and drown in the depths above.

"Of course, your lifespan is short enough without it and I pity you for it," she all but spat to finish it off.

"My kind's the same, longer-lived than humans," Montaron said, "but I don't waste my time speculating on what'll come. Chances are it'll be on the end of a blade taking the other bastard down at the same time."

"We've already lived, Monty," Xzar said. "I saw— In divinations it's so easy to lose your way or die. You saved Miss DeVir and she helped us against the Harpers, and we're still alive against the currents of fate. You should only pretend mad divinations exist to go against them. Everything dies."

"Shar likewise promises the eternal void to come," Viconia said, preaching again and holding up her symbol. "If she is merciful..." The drow's voice changed, going softer as if she meant to speak to herself. "It will be oblivion."

Enough of the hin deities'd have it in for him by now, Montaron reckoned, Arvoreen especially after the stunt they'd pulled with Fentan. Black Dog take him and Mask stop his innards ripped out and roasted by demonkin. No point in thinking of it. "Got a death wish? Don't take it near me, drow," he said.

"You've one of your own by eating that thing," she sulked. "Make me some turnips in milk with pepper."

"Try fillin' your mouth with sausage?" he said, for it were too easy.

"I satiated my curiosity, little man. Don't provoke me to inflict the torture you deserve for that line." The ioun stone was the same colour as her hair, floating close to it like she wore a headband. "You're different to your kin, aren't you? They say a lot about halflings on the surface. They're supposed to be a weak people who exist only within groups and crowds to protect themselves."

"Most longlimbs only care for stuffing their faces and lazing around the same. Shiv enough people who chat about happy pipeweed-stuffing halflings and ye get to hear as little about it as you'd like. What I'd for family's long gone. Aside from the mad wizard and ye I don't deal with other folks' fool blithering and cock-ups," Montaron said.

"Oh, yes," the drow said. "We tend to kill our family members ourselves in the Underdark. It saves time. Some of my sisters and husbands were truly far below the intelligence threshold of a drow."

"I don't have the time to spare to nosewipe brats who should know better. Good riddance to the Bhaalspawn brat and his crew. Killed a sister of mine once—it was faster that way. Doesn't matter." The Zhentilar would've done slower and worse to her. Ye got to the point where slitting throats mattered less. "I'm more'n most who aren't walking the ground any more."

"In the Underdark you would be an arena slave, I suppose," Viconia said. "I would wager a few days' service from pleasure slaves on you. If you concealed your weapons well enough you would win most fights. You use shadows, and stood against the two of the _waess_-dancers at once. Not an untalented assassin, little man."

"Call me assassin again and say a funeral prayer for your hamstrings. I'm no fancypants assassin giggling in pretty black ruffled cloaks about how dark they are. I kill people for coin," Montaron said. "There's a difference."

"Assassins are higher in the social order even in this reversed world." The drow smoothed down her armour. "You're capable. I have gained in the service of Shar and will yet recapture the power I lost. And your wizard..."

Xzar had stopped talking, praise be for the sake of ears everywhere; the mad mage's eyes were closed where he lay down on the ledge. Viconia bent over him and peeled back an eyelid to see rolling white below. She'd a fine-fingered touch when she wanted: Xzar usually slept light and woke up screaming. This time he stayed dead to the world and still as a corpse, and Viconia turned back from him.

"He's quite powerful, isn't he?" she said. "Addled, but it does not harm his magery. Indeed, if he were not, he might be more...difficult to manage. Think of his battles. Perhaps more powerful than you estimate."

Montaron weighed it in his mind, halfway swallowed a piece of his burned meal, and spat it out in shock. "Ye mean to say that behind my back the boy's become some kind of archmage?" he hissed, while Xzar slept on behind. The vamp and the orcblood—they'd been skilled enough, but not that—

"Hardly so," the drow said contemptuously. "But we may as well keep him, I suppose. At the least he—draws attention—"

There was no argument about that use for the mad mage; a chance for the likes of them to slip into the shadows behind the pyroclastics.

"I want all the power I had in the Underdark," Viconia said, and swayed her hips as she walked toward him; she wasn't all that tall for an elf, and it wasn't that he found her length menacing. "I want wealth enough to have beljurils good only for adorning my toes," she said, and he didn't suggest she'd trip. "I want Shar to reign above all who cross my path, of course. I want servants and slaves to carry out my will. I want a place to stay, a matron's estate and all that hedonism could demand. I want treasures, and guards, and pleasure slaves and armour and weapons and the gifts to strike enemies down from a far distance. I want sanctuary to rest—" She broke it off. "I do not hope, for that is worthless and Shar wills it so, but I want.

"And I want you to set higher goals." She stopped short of him, smiling thinly. "You really have no standards at all, do you? It's close to a strength."

_Ye made out best alive by sticking to the shadows and showing up at the conqueror's side to give a few last backstabs to the fool who bit off more power than they could chew. _"We see back in Athkatla," Montaron said, and the plan _Why not step up the game and take from the bastards all that we can_ came to him. "The mad mage gets all these funny ideas now and then. Could work out."

A distant rumble of thunder sounded above them, and as if buckets of water were suddenly dropped down the rain fell once more and doused the brazier. A cloud of hissing steam sprang up and Viconia cursed the weather.

"Get inside, mad wizard," Montaron said, loudly enough to wake him, "we've already established that the cleric's no idea how to cure colds." The black clouds blocked the sky and he sought warmth and shelter.

—


	11. City Advancements

Seemed ye couldn't so much as trip over a gravestone in Athkatla boneyard without whining paladins too sad to detect ye nicking their purses, fool young nobles buried alive, murdered hin ghosts asking for lost teddy bears, funerals for orphan brats with useless Lathanderians, Netherese liches the mad mage kept asking for tea, and the vampire guild that bitch Lairilow'd wanted eyes kept on.

Harper situation'd improved; on the streets they said there'd been a second fight at the estate, red-robed wizard and some Order-bootlicking Helmite flinging spells, and then they'd carried out bodies. The Bhaalspawn was in Athkatla, just like the Harper bitch told it.

"Let's _not_ trouble to seek him out," Viconia said. "He was always an empty-headed fool. Why should he have eyes for the spoilt ugly human child? It would have been less insulting for him to favour some fair vapid do-gooding darthiir or some crusading Harper half-breed mongrel when he travelled with _me_."

"Red robes," Xzar said, "that could mean a colleague of mine...the Thayvian Red Conjurer. No respect for the school of divination at all. I suppose in other ways we're natural foes. He'd rather read scrolls than write them, but he's rather good at reading."

"I do remember that jaluk," Viconia said, spreading her legs and arching her back. "The legendary prowess of Thayvian males...or so he liked to boast." Had she made time for the whining lout? Hard to tell with her.

The Copper Coronet'd changed since the last time in the city: for the worse, since Madame Nin's brothel and the fighting pits had disappeared as if they'd never been there, and for the better, since stout longlimb complaining squires of the Order weren't standing in the corner making nuisances of themselves. Montaron had stabbed the Night Knife in the second room to the right with some prejudice, and slipped a bloodied teddy bear into the mad wizard's pack, for Xzar would be one to carry such a thing. The necromancer knew ghosts; he'd figure it out.

"You can see it quite well from here." The necromancer slid his gnome's seeing-gadget back into his sleeve and turned back from the edge of the Coronet's rooftop, overgrown with mouldy plants and strewn with rough planking. "It's too bad about the sealing. But there's a part in the Weave surrounding the structure that's inescapably designated as an ingress point."

"It bores me," Viconia announced, her back rounded against a selection of winding vines. "A dirty establishment; I have no doubt that its entertainments were not worth the partaking when they existed."

"Mad-mage, we're not in the business of gratifying your curiosity over what's no matter to the Keep," Montaron said. Guards surrounded the sphere of the slums; he'd no doubt that he could get in past them—especially in some night, with human sight blind as it was—but he wasn't working free.

"I've taken care of _that_," Xzar said, and glanced back and forth. "We have an _appointment_."

The air crackled behind him. Montaron's sword was in his hand the next moment, and he lunged toward the wizard from thin air and hoped he'd have split her before a spell came out of her mouth. He stopped short; she was human, and dressed like a Cowlie.

"Adventurers," she said, giving the drow a nervous look that made her seem younger than her pockmarked face gave out. "Master Tolgerias... You were indeed upon his records. His personal records."

"And he's the one who went and vanished in that edifice," Xzar said, nodding and smiling. "For in some bureaucratic nonsense over licences we were hired to recover Lord Corthala the mage-slayer." Bureaucratic nonsense over a Zhent-forged licence that the mad mage had the bright idea could be linked up to the other ones and check all the magic in the city at once—as fool as it was mad. Yet somehow he'd figured that Tolgerias was the Cowlie in that place. If the work involved bloodying his blade to the hilt on a few cocky magelings Montaron thought he'd do it for a few gold.

"I have tried to open it myself," the woman said. "If you cannot I'll have you taken in by the Cowled Wizards for your crimes in Trademeet. Jermien was enlightening enough on that point." An amateur's hand at threats. Montaron kept his hand around the hilt of his blade and smiled up at her.

This would be bloodthirsty.

—

"—Demon hearts," Viconia said, still limping beside him, "and _that_ is what we must measure up to."

Demon hearts Tolgerias had dragged up and stuck dripping in the machine, where the _other_ mad necromancer was fool enough to design six giant golems on a raised platform miles above adamant floor below. Prayer and finger-wiggling couldn't pierce their hides; a bit of well-placed grease could set the heavy iron ones crushing the stone and clay even before the whole mess smashed to the ground. He'd congratulate himself for it right enough.

"Sleep spell, mad mage," Montaron said; the drow could command those that outlasted. Were he alone, he'd get past again by simpler methods. The guards fell. Tolgerias' animated body walked past the mad wizard. Xzar's face was hidden below the faintly glowing parts of the sphere he carried, some component of its engine that he'd made to keep buzzing. In Tolgerias' hands Corthala's shrivelled head sizzled and flickered into dry dust in the doorway, and so did the vial of blood Xzar had squeezed out of the lining of Montaron's pack.

"You murdered my master," the Cowlie girl snarled. Snapping blue fire danced around her feet, and it was after they'd already gone to the trouble of setting the guards asleep.

"He died from his own overarrogance, female, do not repeat his mistakes," the drow told her.

That had her hesitating—but it were better to close off loose ends. These pair of Cowlies had their own little private project; theirs to blame. Montaron slipped into the darkness while the drow and the wizard made their distractions.

"I'm afraid—I really don't believe you," she said. The fireball bloomed over the mage and the priestess. Too bad Viconia'd already conjured up some ointment that salved against mageburns. The shield dancing around the mageling would feel like plunging into ice spears, Montaron knew; but without a dispelment he'd have to. The Cowlie took a decent move for her second and started her eyes blazing with the white that found folk rushing at her: trouble was, it didn't stop folk rushing at her. Montaron stabbed, and below her robes her flesh was softer than Viconia's. She froze his legs stiff then went for a potion on her belt, trying to hold her guts together. Then the drow aimed good with a crossbow to the eye. Around 'em, not like there wouldn't be folk come to eyeball the Cowlie's fireballing, traces that'd lead the mages to avenge a death—

Xzar dropped Tolgerias' body and a piece of golem by it like they'd fought over the Sphere, hit the apprentice's wounds with magefire, and they headed off fast under the drow's cloud of darkness.

"Shar grants me the powers of darkness I lost," she said. "Great Shar, my prayers for your loss to reign..."

...And that could, or not, explain what in all the Nine Hells the two of them were doing with boots sinking into a fleshy, sewer-tainted mass in the depths below Athkatla, listening to sacrificial screams from the dark pit not far from the blind beholder.

"I have to show my faith in Shar," Viconia whispered down at him. They'd found out what it was: no longlimb hustler but an eye tyrant floating in the air with jagged teeth and stalks growing out of its fat skin. A milky-white central eye: and the stalks drooped like there was something off with them too. He'd been bold enough to test the floating groinfruit with a series of Athkatlan hand-gestures; and not one of it or its minions noticed them. "She will guide me."

"Helps those who help themselves," Montaron said. He jerked a dirty thumb at the acolytes milling about seeing hide nor hair of them. Mostly human; one or two hin, which suited him fine to blend in, and a few half-breeds. "They're the same as the peeping-cullion. Easy rigging."

"Oh, very well," she told him. "Do what you must. Shar favours that they have a special captive this day."

Some paladin meddling where he shouldn't, chained up and hauled in and questioned, took five of them to keep him down even as he was. Never said a word, to give him credit: only calls to his deity, pleas for the cultists to repent, cryings-out to some biddy called Maria.

"The likes of him would watch me burn," Viconia said harshly; and the likes of the paladin would watch him and Xzar hang. Montaron did his work. The eye tyrant had the eyes plucked out over a fancy bottomless magepit, seething darkness where noises down at the bottom weren't easy to hear. There were the like of the creature supposed to be with the Zhent higher-ups, but he'd nothing to do with them; and there were the like in the Underdark, but he suspected Lady Muck of the noble drow tended to send out her humble servants for ridding herself of them. Here he'd carried out their setup and got together their killing for Talosian gold.

The paladin saw him coming out of the shadows and to the lip above that bottomless pit where the pair of priests held him. They hadn't blinded him in both eyes like themselves; one open black eye gave out that holy fool's stare that made you feel turned inside-out. Behind him Viconia breathed softly out, as if it hurt her worse. The beholder's tendrils crept across the longlimb's skin. They'd throw him, and that always put off balance. And in that holy fool's glare came something as if he wanted the eye-'nad gone the same, trying to move broken limbs. He'd the pair of priests halfway falling over with him.

Easy as nicking barleysugar from a blind baby.

Spring at the priests from their blindness; knock 'em over where they leaned—and let the paladin drag them down, for he knew the do-gooder's type and didn't trouble to give the knight a last glance to let him fall. Montaron straightened up and went to his thief's trap before the other longlimbs had time to help their floating bollock. Then came oil, feathers, and in a dive upward to the shocked beholder's bobbing, a rotten egg up the noseslits. Then take up the crossbow and shoot a bolt to smash it open and pin it there. The bright lights skimmed past him, the beams from the eyes that stunned and stone-froze and burned. Blind critters got to use their other senses: and in burning heat and stinking smoke it'd not an idea where to aim. One of its own followers froze mid-yell into stone and another, struck by green, was there one moment and not the next. He'd have strangled Xzar's skinny neck for dragging him into a magefight with that kind of spell going on.

The drow got up and made a noise across the pit. "Water to douse your flames, master!" she cried, while Montaron sought the cover of some good rocks. The followers moved like they were one, praying and heading to the master calling them. "Sweet ointment to soothe the smells!" Viconia beckoned, and stuck a command's voice in there. The Unseeing Bollock started to her, wobbling side to side like it'd suddenly got drunk. Exactly as they needed it. Viconia called again like she was some enchantress, and it was levitating near the lip of that magic-dead cliff while a beam from its eyes struck the edge of the rock Montaron hid behind. He loaded his second bolt; still time for the plan. A bit of cold iron were only inconvenience to the like of the creatures, but this one was good right for the eyes. The weighted crossbow bolt thrummed across the gap to the milky space of the blind eye in the dark; and what it didn't do was kill.

The beholder shifted backward enough above the pit: and that gave away the levitation. Fell like a stone, and Montaron grinned in satisfaction until a spell hit him and sent him half-stunned to his knees, and the ground started shaking like a stone troll's death-throes somewhere deep below.

The blind priests marched on with their prayers gathered around them as strong as the drow's, for all their flying prick-gem was dead. Plan's second part: string-pulling and plate-smashing as good as any Viconia could make sound out in one of her worst tantrums, and while his hands were shaking the sound rang out and got them to the other part of the room. Viconia ran around the pit like a hunting-cur on two legs, and instead of her plan of praying to Shar to soak up all the spell-flaring they ignored her for long enough. She'd leave him behind if he couldn't get his legs to work fast enough. He cut his way through one that stood in his way with a long stab to the gut.

Out the doors, two blind guards there with raised spears; and the drow pulled a hold spell while he shouldered the iron doors into place. Wait for their prayers to die down and hope the wedge held them. Longlimb brains and blood fell when she crushed the skull of the first. Best way to do it while they were out of it.

Then the drow forced the other to the wall, drew out a dagger, and showed that for all she couldn't handle the follow-through of a battle she was easy when it came to not killing with a single stab.

"You feel pain, jaluk. You feel such terrible pain...and yet a little pleasure." She lowered a hand, then raised it again for a shallow cut. "You lost your eyes and your sight is dead." They'd started to beat on the doors, and to sob out for the heretics blaspheming their Blind Danglyeye. Viconia stroked a hand over her man's ear. "I have come to show you the way to your true mistress. She is—lady of loss and darkness; and she knows of you already. Take her for your night." Then her small nailpicker's blade sunk lightly into the man's cheek for another line of blood. Ye had to appreciate her work in leaving him a sobbing mass saying his first prayers to the drow's goddess and promising her faith to everyone else.

"—Yer new temple? Going to be High Priestess the way ye fancied in Imnesvale?" Montaron said, clambering first on a sewage-draped ladder back to the surface.

"No; I plan to leave them entirely alone. It is not my business to give charity to the weak. My lady Shar accepts them as worshippers—but the way of their loss makes them pathetic fools." She climbed up behind him. Opposite-way'd been an eyeful.

"Blind ye stand a worse chance of not seeing into shadow. Went down easier than a Calimite whore's drawers on a ship's homecoming. Or like your own," Montaron said.

"You surfacers always say such foolish things," the drow said. "You use words for the female as if meant to degrade. We would say, _as lacking in endurance as a male in his first century_, for the unsatisfactory who are therefore impotent; or _wa'luk_, the abbreviation for male and fool alike; or _nauil'uk_, no mother's son, for one so pathetic as to be unclaimed. Wench and whore and bitch."

"Slave and male and surfacer. Men ain't deadlier; women ain't nobler." Athkatla's sunlight rose above them. "What's your point, lady?"

"Never mind. It is plainly far above your short little head." The drow pulled herself to the last rung of the ladder and drew her cloak over her head. The smell of blood overlaid the sewer stench. "A victory," she said, breathing in Athkatla temple district's air. She squeezed damp blood from her cloak, leaving blood on her hands. Her nostrils were widened, her teeth very white. "If you stank only of blood I could take you now, male. The bloodshed of enemies rouses the instincts. —Or you could always take me to a brothel," she went on quickly. He knew well enough she liked it rough, if more so for giving it. "But the sort you would know probably have rotting diseases."

"And the sort with men don't exactly do a rousing trade to ladies, if ye understand my meaning," Montaron said. "Not turning ye down here."

"Of course you wouldn't, slave. Ask me when you are clean if I am bored." Could take that to mean—never easy to tell from her. Watch what she did.

Athkatla graveyard was dull and overgrown by struggling dark plants and sharp grass; stones tended to white slate, washed to grey sluglike trails by rain and wind. Gravedigger was a halfwitted sot who kept himself away from anything; and all sorts of things lurked in his shadow. The mad mage had picked the inside of a crow-cleared pyramid tomb on the grounds of some muttered myths of longevity and disease-curing—then why didn't the damned Netherese live in 'em instead of bury the dead there?—and at least it kept the rain off. The ground seemed still while they walked in and trailed sewage over the grass. None of the usual potion fumes and mad laughter escaping from their hideout.

Montaron shoved open the door; and reached for his weapons, kicking the drow back into the sun. Leading-vamp was short and pale and half-allergic to wearing clothes, and she moved fast as a leopard. Second vampire was robed like a mage, heavy jewellery over her head, hands raised for a caster. Third and fourth stood by the mad necromancer. Xzar's arms were spread out and still, like a hold spell, and Montaron's ever-present question of if the Zhents would mind that much if he reported the mad wizard's unfortunate self-caused death rose again in him. The wooden crossbow bolt he'd had blessed by a rogue Tymoran thudded into the chief vampire's large chest. Because nobody said ye shouldn't prepare for vamps.

She stopped for a moment and tried to pluck it out of her fleshy bosom. Her eyes were brighter red than Viconia's in a mood, drawing and forcing, and the sick-sweet smell of decay came from her like a perfume.

"Little mice," she said in a foul high breathy little-girl voice like Amauna the priestess, "Welcome home. I've decided it's time for you to pay rent."

—


	12. Night Travels of the Elven Vampire

_Warning_: Chapter is named after this book: crevette. livejournal. com[slash] 113659. html. All responsibility for brainbreak is abridged. Chapter contains sexual content and discussion of rape, possibly triggery. Evil characters being sordid serious evil as well as cartoony evil. Interesting link to writing about rape and the anime Claymore: anamardoll. com[slash] 2011[slash] 08[slash] claymore-rape-and-rules. html, though I do not obey her rules. Again, warning for lack of fluffy Zhentarim in this fic. Backstory element I probably won't be using again.

—

"Ye want us to ship out to the middle of nowhere?" Montaron traced the four of the bloodsuckers: sunlight lasted, but time weren't quite on his side. The lead kept scratching at her chest, strong enough that she was all but ignoring his weapon.

"It's simple," she purred in that high child's voice. "The Bhaalchild knows you; you're a little something extra for me."

"This one's blood smells nice and spicy," one of her men said, over the mad mage. "Mistress Bodhi, might we save time and eat them?"

"Oh—" Xzar said in a falsely high voice of his own, batting his eyes like a woman. "Go ahead! Drink my blood. You know you want to."

The mage-vampire crossed to him in that loping unnatural stride of the bloodsuckers and sniffed. "He's done something to himself. The blood smells..._very_ good. Sweeter than that squealing circus-elf. Unfortunately the necromancer has added some poison to it. I suspect it would draw us to its scent and slay us." She shrugged her veil-laden shoulders.

"And I slipped the same into Monty and Miss DeVir's food," Xzar said sharply. "You can't eat us, at least for a month or so."

A lie; Montaron made damned sure that the mad mage didn't tamper with the food after the disaster with polymorph and firebreathing. Maybe there were still rabbits with dragonbreath lurking in those hills. Worked in their favour, though.

"I could lock you in a sealed crypt with a few of my disposable fledglings," the lead-vamp said. "They kill you and remain there; please _don't_ start to bore me, mageling."

"That's a nice staff," the mage-vampire said, taking it from Xzar's frozen hand. "I think I'll keep it."

"It's a symbol of what happens when you introduce a planar transportation engine into the fuel of a rogue-stoned pocket dimension and turn every creature there inside out in empty Realmspace," the mad mage went on, "Monty, Miss DeVir, I think the _Sunder Wet It_ have become slightly less of a present matter—though I _did_ use one of your gemstones on the jump, the glow like the wing of a flightless bird in the sea—"

"Ye ruined one o' the rogue-stones? Blasted mage, they're worth thousands of gold—"

"It's a _very_ nice staff," the mage-vampire repeated, and made herself start glowing with dweomer-shields that meant serious bad news in the field.

"Ignore the males," Viconia said, striding toward the vampire like she owned the place. "We females know better how to get to a point, don't we?"

"Finely said, woman," Bodhi replied. "I should consider keeping you. Gifts and intelligence and a dark charisma. You submit to a lower geas from Tanova; travel with us; and when you are called on speak to Benrulon as former companions. You were—transported—by those with cowls, you understand?"

"We don't work for free," Montaron burst out. The bloodsucker and the drow glared. "Ye must have coin aplenty from your graves," he went on. "Add a carrot to the mix—"

"Bold for a small man," Bodhi said. "The least useful of you three for our purposes. Yet I promise you will be rewarded for your efforts. The more so if you prove yourselves. We sail at dusk."

—

Geas-spells crackled and settled inside you like a cross between lightning bolts and bad cheese. It didn't go too far, Montaron told himself; and sooner or later the vamps would've overpowered them.

"_When you meet Benrulon speak of being sentenced_," the mad mage repeated to himself. Over and over again. He'd sat drooping, minding it; where Montaron didn't think much of the single order to kill. The sister was a young thing when he'd met her, a thief; the boy must've managed to grow up."_When you meet Benrulon's sister speak of being sentenced. Speak of the times in the past. Stay with them until I order to kill. Kill then. Kill them. Show my brother that he thinks too much of himself. Kill the Bhaalspawn if it endangers me. Kill the Bhaalspawn if it endangers one of my fledglings. Kill the Bhaalspawn. Swear it. Kill._"

The vamps had the bottom of the ship to themselves, and they got the mad mage to do up potions. They'd live prisoners to feed on, four ex-Shadow Thieves chained up in the hold; and like as not some of the crew at that. Montaron had always hated boating. It was cramped as a city alleyway but with not half the diversions. The crew were slipshod and shabby as far as he could tell, and that weren't a pleasant thought when their flimsy sails and masts and creaking planks were all between them and a watery grave. He'd had to teach a few a lesson at blade's point on not calling halflings funny names. All he did was sharpen weapons and stretch his muscles, where in the city he'd get all he needed in doing bloodshed. After the first few days the crew started to get bored of poking the vamps' mercs, or got drunk enough to lie around and lift not a finger to run the boat.

He'd walked in on the drow in bed with one of the male vamps, his face where teeth would be painful to bite. Then she started chanting prayers to Shar, like she wanted control; and the bloodsucker raised his head and shook it free of her.

"That itches, mortal female," he said. "Mistress Bodhi will be displeased that you try it."

"Get out," she said in a temper, flinging an iron candlestick holder at the vamp's head, "Bodhi may take her itches and fornicate with whichever sheep she prefers. You are disgustingly cold and—" Montaron figured it best to leave in a hurry, not that he was afraid of what she could do to him. There weren't many spells she could cast that blade or bolt couldn't beat by speed.

_Kill the vamps. Kill the Bhaalspawn first; nothing to make that difficult. Let the mad mage think about what was said._ No chance that the vamps wouldn't see them as meals once they were done. He patted the small package of blessed bolts he'd smuggled aboard. Water from the same Tymoran, shards of the Umar sun bullets, and stakes to hammer in the gravedirt were easy to improvise out of ships' planks. Bloodsuckers were fast and bloodsuckers had powers and bloodsuckers could take ye into thrall easy as blinking: make your first shots count and count good, keep a watch out and don't let them see your eyes, know where they are always.

"...And it's an _asylum_, Monty, they take you there and lock away your magic. I really didn't want to go there," the mad mage tried to explain.

"Ye'd be the kind of person they build these things for. Excellent cover," Montaron said.

"Vampires are cold," Xzar said. "They're animate, but they only look like people until they move or say something. Something that looks human but isn't—it doesn't bother me, but it bothers people who think of vampires as pale pretty people with a skin condition and an overbite, and haven't done their research into corpses. When they get close, you smell the rubbish-heap of decay under their skin. And when they bite, it's not a pair of sweet delicate pinpricks like a fine needle to the neck. They're hungry, and they'll feast by tearing into your neck like the blades of a rusted saw. It takes only a minute or two for a human to bleed out from the jugular; and it's hardest to heal jagged wounds. Blood's all they live for: not magic and not trying to mock flesh and not the lives of each other. Although Lassal keeps saying I drive him mad." He blinked.

"Your blood'll really poison them, necromancer? Give me some of it," Montaron said. "Small pellets of glass on my bolts—smash 'em inside the skin and let it spill. I'd want some fireseed mix, but the Amnians weren't selling any."

"It would become inert too soon, but I can fix that," Xzar said. "Thank you, Monty. Clever thought."

If ye tended to dispose of folk working for you, sooner or later the talk of it spread; 'twas why so-called Lady Desmonda of the Keep couldn't get good help after the number of servants found half-witted for life following a session or two with her. Bets were on whether she were bloodsucker or squidface or demon in private. But when the reputation wouldn't spread, ye did as ye felt like. "Kill 'em when she says it," Montaron said. "Nothing in there that says she's got to speak all the time, right?"

"A good point. Ways to work in, defy; ways to get away from it all—"

"Ways to kill the lot of 'em," Montaron said. "Ye do know the drow's taken to sleeping with the enemy, don't you?"

"—I've never properly understood the meaning of that term. It's hardly restful," Xzar said. "Or one could put it that she's testing protections against the undead. Anyway, they're our present employers. That's close to friendship, isn't it?"

—

Crew were subdued and half bloodless by the fifth day or so; in the dark the ship shone out lit signals in different colours across the sea, as if they were smugglers or pirates. Viconia went out in the open, hoodless, high-stepping across the deck and swaying easily with the rhythm of the boat.

"Male, are your surfacer tales of sea-serpents true?" she called to a crewsman polishing some planks. "Or the one about sailing far enough—too far. To the endless horizon over the void. How is it possible to know your direction when there are no cave walls to guide you?"

"What is—true?" the man said blankly, like a vampire'd gone too far in sipping life out of him. His name'd been Gorwin. "Serpents twining. Blood-coloured, I suppose, twisting out of you. I don't know. I don't know nothing. My new name is Carry."

"We've been out five days," Montaron said, though in truth he wasn't one for sea-voyaging. "Not likely the end of the world's here."

"Sail far enough and the waters pour from the sky down below the square of the world," Gorwin said. "But I've not seen it. And not these waters."

"The horizon already and always vanishes into nothing," Viconia said, annoyed. "It's natural to think that in this wide place the end is close. The black seas of the Underdark are wide, but they are ever protected by dark stone glowing in moss."

"There's no end," the mad mage chimed in, rising up from a crouch below the shadow of the deck. "The world is round. You can prove the length of a ribbon around it by measuring the angle of the sun in two places at the same time and knowing the meridian arc..."

"Now _that's_ crazy talk," Gorwin said.

"Enough madness," Montaron said.

"A ridiculous notion even by the standards of your usual nonsense, male," Viconia finished. "Rot from your corpses settling into your skull?"

"Crazy men on a ship," Gorwin said. "Women. Living corpses. Blood in the hold. Unlucky, I tell you. I am Carry. I must go." Shuffled off, poor-bastard; touching a hand to the rough scarf around his neck every so often.

"Pick your side, drow," Montaron said, "rotting corpses or the likes of us?"

"In the Underdark," Viconia said slowly, "a pair of females together is called a—"

"Floor show?"

"Conspiracy. You're an amateur plotter, little man. Though now you mention it, there _were_—shows of males in the Underdark," Viconia said. "Men with men serving for the pleasure of females. It was always the most amusing when the two males were unwilling to mate with each other, for then it solely served the desires of the priestesses watching... Reluctantly their dry lips met each other's flesh, again and again, until or if the demonstration was attractive enough for a female to take them."

"Mad wizard? Ye likely have something else urgent to go off and do," Montaron said; it worked on getting the mad mage to scuttle off like a rabbit.

"No, I think your wizard might be _too_ interested," the drow said, and laughed. "My third husband hated it when I wanted him taken by a slave. As did the slave. A tall, muscular type...brainless, of course, worthless, but handsome. I delayed sending him to the spider pits for a month after he slipped and broke one of my crystal vases because he pleaded so prettily. Then I chose my husband to be hunted down for the sport of the House; I'd grown bored of him. We rode large _tizzin_, scaled-ones, in a maze of caverns, letting him believe for a few hours he'd a chance of fleeing. Then I caught my prey and...finished him. First one way, strapped to a saltire, and then the other."

Drow ways weren't surfacer ways, but they could be close enough. "Once I was in this gang of toughs, and we'd branched out to insurance-selling," Montaron said. He shouldn't have cared much for long tongue-waggings. "Be a shame if anything were to happen to your stall, mate, that sort of thing. There was a bunch of rivals out for the same thing, and our leading boys—pair o' longlimb brothers, vicious as anything—decided it was time to teach proper respect. Found where that bunch went, then we were told to fire the house."

Two-floor falling-apart place in the slums, no light showing anywhere near and the rats scuttling through the gutters. He could see it clear enough in his head still, and taste the smell of it.

"Shived a pair of sentries and started laying down oil rags, then it got messy," he said. "Brassy Graves came out as if he'd wanted it for a trap, wearing jewels like he was too good for Cotting-street, a pair of his seconds. They threw cheap smoke at us, and then they got Crimald bad in the eye."

Spouted thick as a fountain over the dirt on the old cobblestones. Crimald howled like a stuck pig and his brother had come in from behind to brain the other thug. Montaron had thrown a dagger or two, slipping between the longlimb bastards and trying to stay alive, because back then he hadn't been any near the scrapper he was now.

"But Graves had undercut us, and we got the better o' them soon enough, though Brassy himself showed his white tail running off. Piled up oil rags exactly as we planned and lit it to burn," Montaron said. "Ronvald still weren't happy with what happened to his brother, and Crimald was raging like a wild barbarian. That's when Brassy's people came running out of his place, a pickpocket kid who got out fast enough and Brassy's whore. She was an elfblooded thing, small and cat-spitting."

Frightened, for her man had abandoned her. Not so pretty in the face, twisted and dirty as any streetwalker in those quarters. Tangles of smoke-streaked coppery hair and an old grey dress. He'd still been young enough to be scared when Ronvald grabbed her and punched her to the chest, and she crumpled easy as a lit match.

"Brassy's whore, like I said. Crimald laid into her one-eyed, screaming about what Brassy's gang'd just done to him. Flung her against a wall and took her there, because she was one of them." The elfblood had only screamed for the beating; from all he'd seen she was half out of it by the time Crimald had her. "One of Brassy's. Then he passed her to his brother."

Ronvald liked to fancy he was the subtle one, and he dug fingernails in the girl's skin to make her moan.

"Show her which gang had the real men, they said. Show Brassy what we did to his. Passed her around to all of us. I wasn't much, then, but I did the same."

_Not a real man if ye don't._ She'd been all but unconscious come his turn, lying in the black mud as bruised and torn as the dress on her back, cold-fleshed. It'd been over thankfully quickly; halfling had to show himself the same as the rest. Better to pay for it and keep it simple. Only time he'd forced a woman.

"Haven't done the sort since," Montaron said. "Glad ye had happy times down there below the ground, drow."

"Roles are reversed on the surface," Viconia said, so icily that he watched her carefully. "That female made herself weak. There is no responsibility to give bounty to the weak. Surfacers lack our sophistication, but not our...abilities. A ritual called the Blooding is proof of drow adulthood." She changed subject quickly. "I travelled briefly to the surface and killed a human, one of those nauseating priests of sickly-sweet charitable deities. I was cloaked and feigned to be a beggar in need, then brained him with my mace. He was another weakling. The strong prey and one does not support the lazy. Again and again the Underdark and the goddess Shar teach the lessons of survival. If at times I forget it—then I have come to remember." She looked down on him. "I tried farming in Beregost after I left the Bhaalspawn, male," she said. "I walked away from it."

—


	13. Asylum Unhallowed

_Warning_: Chapter contains Xzar giving a Friendship Speech. This is the wrong fanfic to cross over with _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_, isn't it?

—

You stunk after nine days on board ship; curse it, he was starting to think like the drow would have it. Gangplank thudded into place at nightfall, though they'd moored all day. Slipped out and went up past a harbour town, all stained wood and unkept streets; up along high thin rope bridges, between enough vampires to stop any funny business. They left the crew behind on the ship; they'd be expecting to go back, then. The Shadow Thieves were well out of it, in worse health than ever, chained up and flopping together while the bloodsuckers Lassal and Valen pulled them along with ridiculous strength. No chance for help from them. Above on a high cliff stood a grey building that looked like it'd been assembled by some mad mage at the patchwork, a piece here and a piece there in crazy jagged lines that couldn't fit together. No village idiot could have failed to guess what that was. The bridges swayed in the wind above long falls below; the vamps weren't any lighter than they'd been alive and the thieves' chains weighed them well down. Bodhi's mouth was a red slash on her pale chin, and if she'd been less dangerous Montaron would've accused her of dribbling her meals. Asylums were the mad wizard's natural home, though it seemed more like the place scared Xzar silent. Perhaps he should scare him more often; it shut him up. Encourage the drow to go after him for a change.

Her hips swayed below her armour ahead of him, Viconia holding her head high as if the bloodsuckers were there for her escort instead of she near as much a prisoner as the thieves. She looked only in front, neither glancing to left or right. Ye never understood her easily. Gone off at him, brought him to her cabin, added more pain than good times to it until he'd grown sick of her. Enough folk already trying to spit him and cut him. Ye could say she'd been bored enough to try a second taste of halfling freeman, or ye could say she was all sorts of angry. He'd seen her torment the blind worshipper into swearing to Shar, as coldly as he slit a quick throat himself. She burned and froze by turns, and looked at him as if she wasn't seeing him there at all. Could've been an insight there, but it was the woman's business when or if she talked. The trouble was more often to stop her complaining.

Parts of Spellhold were scaffolded, half-built as if carpenters had run off and never came back. Old fraying ropes hung parts of the construction work, spare planks and lashed-together platforms washed by rain and dust. They'd come close to the stone bricks of the main part of it, high up enough that the harbour town was small as a wasps'-hive below. And getting rid of the last chance they had to escape before they entered the place, Montaron knew. Too many vamps, that Tanova's red eyes flickering over to the ones she'd geased, Bodhi's large bosom swaying in the mess of straps she wore with dark fluid trickling down it. The mad mage looked near as pale as one of the creatures in the night now.

The asylum's doors creaked open like the hinges had been sealed close; lock on them seemed elaborate enough, most likely mage-fiddled. The smell of the vamps close to him was fit to make ye lose dinner, all old blood and rotting pieces. Bloke who walked out, Montaron told himself, wasn't so very much to look at for a longlimb—tall and muscled, a stiff-skinned face, long trousers under a bare chest and heavy boots. The face was so stiff it had to be unnatural, but he didn't have the look of a vamp.

"Bodhi. At last you've come, dear sister..."

Then the mad mage started moving; and though the bloodsucker Lassal tried to grab him he wove forward on the last rickety bridge, pointing a finger at the stiff-faced longlimb.

"You're empty," Xzar began, "please get away from me! It's cold all around the planes, ice from a broken shadow. You're not human; you're fallen a long way and a long way to go yet; and the hunger inside you could eat a thousand souls and never become the thing you crave." The mad mage's speech was strong enough to hold things for a moment, and with that crazy strength for the moment he dodged past the vampires—and got to waving his hands close to the bloodsucker's brother. Some sort of wild divination trance. "Icarus," Xzar said, "you have more than one name and both are curses; your wax wings burned in the light; Shattered One—fractus, ireni—"

Montaron had searched for his bolts, his smuggled holy-water; but even before him the bloodsucker Lassal had shaken off that quick madness, and knocked Xzar unconscious to the ground by a neck-twist that stopped just short of killing him.

"Who are—these, Bodhi?" the stiff-faced longlimb said in a voice like chips of metal. Montaron had watched the face, and at last he'd seen it: a mask, made of skin. He'd thought the bloodsuckers were the worst threat. He'd been wrong, and looking at the pale blue holes set in the mask was enough to turn bowels to water. He tried to hide it, stand it out.

"Pawns known to the godspawn, brother. The drow amuses me almost enough to keep." Bodhi sniffed the air, raising her head. "_He_ has come to the town; he must be indulging in some pathetic do-gooding before he dares come to us. I smelt his presence. Where is your promise to me?"

"You were ever impatient," the masked one said. "House your minions in the coffins below; bring your thieves to the jar room. And keep your pawns well from my sight." The blue gaze fell on Xzar again, as if deadly rage sought to break free from it; then to the drow second, and instead of posing Viconia stood still. Montaron waited below notice, for it happened often to halflings by fools.

—

"It's friendship," the mad wizard speechified, pacing the corners of the small windowless cell with a finger raised in the air. "A spark in the heart of all of us. Not literally, unless you hook hearts up to a lightning generator. A candle in the void of the deep darkness...often, indeed, caused by us. Even monsters are not monstrous all the time. A golden thread that brought us this far; even if we fail now we'll always have Athkatla, where my laboratory was destroyed and we were captured by vampires. And Imnesvale, where we were framed for crimes by the Twisted Rune. And Tradesmeet, where we were set on our current disastrous path. And still, Monty, Lady DeVir, if you die perhaps I won't say that I never loved you. Because after we've shared this fantasy and adventure together, we've formed one big happy family. Friendship, a ship big enough to carry two in fair weather— I mean, magic of itself. Friendship, kindled in..."

Montaron ignored him. He'd paced the room half a hundred times himself, checking floor tiles and having the drow stand on the stool to press her hands to the ceiling. The door was barred from the outside, and warded against using mage-spells; not even the idiot Rashemi could have forced it. He sat and waited. Pressure of the spells stopped him from killing the mage-vampire or Bodhi herself. But one of the fledglings— Viconia could try to shatter its concentration, and perhaps they could bring it down without killing. Then break the joint and hide out in the shadows of the island. The small island.

Mask take it. Down, but not out; Montaron wasn't one to worship oblivion like the Sharran. More than a day, he thought. They'd gone through a clay flask of water and a few loaves of dry bread, and improvised a chamberpot in the corner. The door splintered in like a hurricane when Bodhi punched through it.

His hands on the crossbow were suddenly numb and Tanova's spell was about to make him retch. The chief vampire posed in what had been the doorway, her skin flushed light pink as if she'd just eaten, her barely-there outfit still straining around her full breasts. Bodhi's lips were red as an apple, and her gaze had turned near-black instead of crimson. She dusted away splinters from her hair.

"I simply don't know my own strength these days," she breathed, her chest not far from Montaron's eye-level and rising and falling while she spoke quickly. "I could lift oliphaunts with one hand—swing a trapeze across the cliffs of Tethir—ride a centaur all night—either way—"

"You have changed, _elg'caress_," Viconia said stiffly, counting on the surface-elf vamp not knowing a word of drow.

"You're...a diamond," the mad mage said. "Something held amidst facets, gem-binding—"

"I'm also bored," Bodhi said. She grabbed Xzar with one hand and threw him into the opposite wall, outside the room. "It is decided. I will have a hunt. Benrulon is bound for the maze of madness. I will lock you there and you will join him and tell me of the loss of his soul." That was mage-stuff. Montaron followed Viconia out to watch the bloodsucker standing over the wizard. "No stream of mad nonsense to regale me with? If I had not fed already I would be tempted to test if you lied of the duration of that enchantment gushing through your veins. Or if I knew you were going to give me an interesting fight."

"You've grown exuberant, lady-vampire," Xzar said, brushing plaster fragments from his robes. "Whose head did you cut up for that pink-tinged optimism? Would you dive into the lost tombs of the sea's darkness for fun?"

"You talk," Bodhi said. "It's funny, drow, I would have guessed the human to be your consort, though he is not nearly so pretty as his blood smells. What on Toril is the small man for? I favour my male thralls large and easily broken; as for those women I take with a bite and a gaze, I have enjoyed a wider range... Perhaps I shall eat the Bhaalspawn's silly little lover in front of him, just to watch his expression. Or perhaps I shall have the big Helmite for my own, for his muscle pleases me. Or to rid myself of the sound of the Thayvian's voice—I have heard it twice and that was enough, and I wonder if he would still speak through his nose with a throat gushing open? I wish I could kill them all and do it again to see how it brings the most pain. I am restored and I have a world at my feet, and they will all fear and worship on their knees. Am I a goddess, not-person?" She spun the mage around with another push; and then she was by them as well, harrying them to where she wanted. She raced like an arena-beast starved for a week, panting not at all.

"All goddesses think they are," Xzar said, stumbling along by her, "all goddesses want to eat people, too. All goddesses might or might not affirm the consequent fallacy. You could have platters of blood like dining-tables."

"_Goddess_—next to Shar that undead slattern is _iblith_—" Viconia whispered; Montaron caught her speech, but the mad wizard had the bloodsucker's attention.

"What at middle age threads back to its birth? What has many mouths but one breath? What nurtured a bull-monster and was destroyed by a scarlet thread?" Xzar carried on.

"An easy one, mage!" Bodhi said, laughing. "The labyrinth, of course—why, once I ran through one that ended the same as the beginning, the trees that formed it twice my height, a hunt within for deer—and then I killed it, and those who whelped me were upset because it got too bloody. I swear by the dark powers I was too good for them! Perhaps I shall hunt you in the same way—"

"Only illusionists hide, lady vampire. Necromancers seek the dead—even the woken dead. It flies like a false light in a prism; it does not lie weary in death; blood-flush to its cheeks like the flesh of a mellow apple..."

"Words may be your servants, spellcaster—and I had too many of them from my brother." Down a set of stairs Bodhi pushed them into another small room; this one stunk of magery. Viconia scowled. "You will use them on the Bhaalspawn. I can't wait to watch your progress. Should I strangle the little halfling with my bare hands, teach you to obey...? Oh, later, perhaps; I smell my brother working. Farewell, mortal ones."

Another seal slid shut behind them. Montaron swore at the moment the floor gave way. He tried to stop himself with a dagger, but something had made the wooden chute hard as steel and the drow's body knocked into his. They landed down like so much old rubbish, in a cell behind thick stone. The chute folded back up and moved itself away far above them. Viconia chanted a healing spell for her bruises; but the mad mage was actually grinning.

"_Monty_," he said, "just listen to me. She was empty like her brother but now she's full, she's got something, but he's even worse, the waxen wings—he is cold and he cannot stop the monster he has become with a thousand meals of people—no, it's important to you too, Miss DeVir. Because it'll be all right, and you have to come back for me. Just believe me—" The mad mage spread his hands, talking wide-eyed and unhinged and not at all convincing. "Bodhi used the singular nominative pronoun when she spoke to me. You join Benrulon, she said to me."

He'd heard her himself. Montaron shook his head at the fool's ramblings. "To _me_," Xzar repeated, waving his hands in the air as if he was trying to cast something on them, his eyes a bright mad green. "She meant you-as-one-person. She wasn't talking to you two. Can you believe that strongly enough for the geas? Come on, Monty. She ordered _me_ locked in here and to give Benrulon an account of my madness and confinement; and you two are free to explore. You're not mad. You'll get through it." He smiled crookedly. "Believe me now?"

"Yes, _kivvil_," Viconia said. She moved around the painted-wood room, examining the walls, and Montaron saw himself that the panelling wasn't nearly so solid as the old cell.

"Come back to me," Xzar said. "Don't leave me alone here."

Viconia paused, her fingers inches from a section of panelling that could be slid aside by careful hands. "Perhaps," she said, unkindly. Montaron brought it loose, and across the room a decoration of an ogre head slid halfway open in reply.

—

_A/N_: Quotage from the Devil's Dictionary.

—


	14. Rats in a Mad Maze

A half-buzzing feeling in his innards, like he was disobeying the binding, but it faded keeping his mind on what Xzar had said of Bodhi's meaning. Ways to sneak past it. He'd never been one for obedience.

The Bhaalspawn was coming; best keep ahead. The walls twisted and turned as crazy as anything the mad mage could patchwork up. Montaron had heard tales of wizards who could do that inside your head, pack you away to endless corridors until you solved them or died from it. Gaping-toothed faces of monsters screamed from the walls of peeling paint, colours faded like ghosts. Unfinished zigzag staircases that never went anywhere, false doors that couldn't be opened, alcoves that rose at odd angles and were invisible from the halls. Dust floated in the air and faint lights came from no source he could spot, and in different parts of the place faded out again with no rhyme or reason for it. Their boots left tracks on the dirty floors.

"Follow the left wall is the rule in the Underdark," the drow said, losing breath in her run. "That undead—that undead _rothe_! The mage openly flirts with the slattern, your eyes never leave her overstuffed fat chest—a disgusting sight. I'd slip poison in her goblet of blood if not for the contract. You gape and drool over her."

"'S not true," Montaron said, "height fixes things that way. Do a casting, woman—can't have ye falling behind." There were enough pictures of monsters, like warnings; but so far only some goblins had jumped out at them from an alcove. He'd finished them.

"Shar, grant me power—and grant me sight of the way," Viconia said, blinking at the circling walls. She straightened up, walking faster. "I know your height, pathetic male. It has points of convenience."

"Or, doesn't matter if you're both lying down," Montaron said. He tapped a wall done in plain green. "This one's hollow..."

"And Shar tells me a path extends beyond it," Viconia said. They pulled it open, stepped into the darkness behind it—

Yellow stripes hit him and danced inside him, and where he couldn't tell friend from foe Montaron tended to rush forward and stab whatever bled. He tasted acid blood, something falling apart wetly; heard screaming he didn't understand. He killed something—slit into plates of heavy stuff and felt the blood soak his hands. Something smelled of burning.

When he came back to himself, he held his blade pressed to smooth dark flesh, and behind him a hand reached down to wrap cool fingers around his throat. He knew the smell of the dead: huge insect-monsters that made ye forget everything. His head ached like someone'd been stirring teaspoons inside his skull and drinking the contents. The drow's breathing echoed twice over.

"_Heethir'ku_," Viconia said. And—

"Doppelganger," Viconia said.

"My dagger is against your spine," the drow he threatened said.

"My blade's back on ye," Montaron said, but it hadn't been him who said it.

"Fool. You were confused by the umber hulks," Viconia said. "My fires of Shar took down one of them."

"_Mine_. You blaspheme Shar, shapeshifter! Turn to your true form."

Fool mage-tests. Two doppelgangers, two of him and the drow, foul shape-shifters he'd seen once in Zhentil Keep; or it could be three doppelgangers and he the only real one. That's what he'd have done: thief's simple trick, have three nut shells and let the mark think that the ball was under one when it was under none. Were these fool mageries bright enough for that?

"Let me go, wench," he swore. "We could beat two shapeshifters without trying. Don't threaten me."

"Release me first," one of her complained. "I cannot trust that you are not. I will cast my poison spell below your skin, shapeshifter." The hand tightened on his neck.

Turn and stab the one behind before she cast her spell, or stab into the one in front of him. The one in his shape had the same one covered; Viconia threatened him back. Bluff or double-bluff; let them untangle themselves and he'd outfight the freak in his shape, but she'd like as not need time to get off a casting.

"I am the proper one," breathed the one who held his throat. "Fight with me and I'll..." She finished with whispering interesting examples of things to do, things they'd already done.

"_Sakphul_, I swear I'll rip your throat out with a dull blade," the one in front of him said, "and blind your eyes with a spell from Lady Shar and burn you even more than the_ wael_—"

He stabbed backward. The shapeshifter's silver blood fell from a deep cut in its wrist and he wrenched the clawed hand away from his throat. The true Sharran bled from her neck, but she stabbed the doppelganger deep with a small hidden blade she'd asked him to obtain for her, and its grey hands shifted to their natural weaponry. He pulled as strong as he could on the bleeding wrist and sliced into the shapeshifter's neck, deep enough that even it couldn't fix a head half off. Viconia was a good distraction for the one she fought, if nothing better, and he stabbed it in the back to finish it off.

"They reached inside our heads," she said, angry, and then started a casting. It settled over his head like the confusions before he'd time to object, but it was shield instead of attack. "One test complete. When did you realise it was me, little man?"

"The death threats," Montaron said honestly, "you were nastier than the shifter."

"And you marginally more cunning than the other," the drow said. She healed herself; and stepped onward.

Bull-men had come roaring out of the passageways, like the mad mage had named, seven-foot tall axe wielders running round without britches. They were tough; but better them than mind magic, and each time he slit the hamstrings and brought one down to his height the blood managed to improve his mood. The drow's spell froze a few of them in place at once, all ripe for the pickings. Almost too easy. They rounded a corner and the stench of undead came up like rotten fruit.

"_Turn_..." Viconia prayed. "I have more power now. Shar, my lady..."

Fast-moving ghouls in tatters of mage's robes, as if they'd been crazy enough to never escape this place. Montaron might have noticed that the floor's patterning was drawn like a gate if he hadn't been busy fighting them. Some of them had old spells: acid hit his right shoulder and ate into the muscles of the arm. Too many of them. Viconia cried to her goddess and black fire wove into them. He changed hands for his blade and moved as fast as he could, for it was the only hope. Cut off rotting kneecaps and let them shamble over each other, forget the burning pain and defy the cold claws that tried to command him to stay permanently still. A ghoul lurched past him and to Viconia, stopping her casting, and she drew mace and fought it when her holy symbol raised to it didn't stop it. He sliced off a ghoul's hand casting for more acid, and on the floor it boiled away into green liquid. The flesh he touched at the end of his dagger slipped and slid over his skin like sewer mud. The ghouls reached for him, wounding him. Let them try, curse it.

"—The rivers run red—"

Pale fluid gushed from the undead. In the end he stood above the dead not moving any more, Viconia above her own. He needed a healing casting or a few, for they'd no time to rest. The red dripped from him, and the acid burned like Chessentan fire. The healing spell started to come at last. Then the gate opened below their feet and took them elsewhere.

He ran down a narrow hall of dry dusty ghosts, wishing for a healing potion. _Wasn't myself_, a long-dead crazy mage whispered. _They all died in my experiment and I wasn't sorry_, a second voice none too different from the mad wizard they were acquainted with. _Too much happened and they broke me in the end_, from a third robed ghost that disappeared when he turned his head to stare directly at it.

Going too fast, he thought. Newborn cully's mistake to give in to the enemy's traps. Mage-ghosts didn't matter to him.

_I could not face the monster inside me and I shattered_, another whined. Ye took what ye had and went with it, not stood around snivelling even after undeath.

Skindancers rising fleshless in the dead of the night. Harpers beating and torturing. Zhentilar marching into the Falls and reaving all they found there.

_Ancient history, ancient as the drow—_

She was ahead, panting her way through her share of ghosts. "_Faern_," she spat, "only dead faern—by Shar, disappear—" Some seemed to flicker away from her, a little. Then she got to that healing spell.

"We—started ahead of the Bhaalspawn," she said, tired-sounding. "How much more? Surely speed is of the essence. To—gain all control above being controlled, for some of the drow way serves well enough still..." She clenched her fists.

"I'll toil enough to feed my blade," Montaron said, though he thought she aimed a touch too high, and raised a plank of the floor for the disarming of a metal plate below that had it unsettled. He'd lost direction, turned around and about, but it felt like they headed upright, and the drow prayed and nodded where he went in the winding halls. Up to air away from Spellhold's suffocating walls and the fecking bloodsuckers.

This time the darkness came piece by piece in on them, soaking into hexagonal tiles on the walls and floors and turning where they walked to dark grey, and in their more-than-human sight they did not see the descent of the mage's night that blinded everything until too late.

Couldn't see his own hands; and couldn't feel the floor below. He spoke into the night and none answered back. Paced forward once, though ye shouldn't where the tiling and tripwires weren't known. Couldn't tell time passing, couldn't tell sight or feeling or hearing. Ye could lose a mind easily in here. A test the mad wizard couldn't have passed. Montaron turned his head back and forth, and clenched his hands and couldn't feel his own skin. Like clinging to a rope off the end of a black Keep tower, wet rain slicking the stones, and let go and plummeting to the ground, nothing to hold to. Fingernails scraped bloody against the sides of it and gargoyles' heads bruising the skull while you fell past. He remembered well enough. Held on to sanity in the dark.

He stepped forward again and again, for all there was no sign of direction to follow, and started to see things out of the darkness. A white translucent pointy-ear man, in chainmail and drawing an odd blade—drow, he reckoned, slightly shorter than Viconia.

"Valas," Viconia's voice cried out, "Valas, in this dark here, come back to me."

He answered her in drow tongue, and then she replied in the same language. This Valas had the same kind of shape as her, something in stance and long forehead and in-pointing cheekbones on his face. Valas raised his sword and cast some sort of false spell around his off hand, and then the drow shook and changed his shape. There was nothing he could do to a ghost; Montaron watched it happen. The lower half of the man fell off, legs in a bloodied heap below him, and then out of the drow's waist eight spider legs came down from him. The drow's teeth grew to fangs and the furred legs reared and bucked.

"Viconia, _z'hann, z'hann_—" the spider-drow shouted and screamed out of a spider-mouth, his eyes multiplying to eight in bubbling flesh on his forehead. "_Nin!_"

Viconia could be heard panting, half-sobbing, as if she ran exhausted. The spider-drow's magic flared white as his ghost-shape; invisible blades tore him bloody but he stood. An infant cried in the distance loud enough to set Montaron's teeth on edge.

"I face these tests," Viconia said viciously. "—You may show me your next shadow, for I am not bowed before that vision!" Then she went quiet again.

Nightmares. Set the mad mage here and he'd come up with worse, a maze of all the things he was in the dark ye couldn't manage to escape from. A decade or four ago Daggerfalls was the city of Daggerdale, Montaron could recall, mining and farming despite the name, a slum district of commonborn hin who lived in filth. All helpless enough when the Zhentilar marched in and killed to amuse themselves, they hid for a while but it were no use. If he'd not slit Gemara's throat worse would've happened to her, useless folk for looking after themselves. Time was later he'd been picked up by the Zhents himself for a hireling, and if they hadn't put him off by sending him south with the mad mage he'd not be here to start with. Ye were better off alone.

And Viconia started talking again, screaming. "Don't bury me! I shall not be in the ground! _Iblith, zatoasten, waelen, qualla! Dorn elgg ir, dorn elgg ir_—"

Too dark. There'd be ghosts here for him calling his name too. Marks he'd killed, ex-comrades he'd stabbed in the back. Every last bit that he wasn't fool enough to let into his nightmares when he'd a chance to rest.

Tested mages here for sanity, every last bit of what their mad minds dragged up. Montaron could remember his just the same, elfblooded girl with dirty copper hair crying, first time he killed a man in a fight and slid the dagger across a throat, cutting down a Flaming Fist from behind, a crossbow bolt to a woman's skull and feeling nothing of it, nothing at all for killing the bastards before they got to you first. The drow let herself live through her troubles.

It pulsed and buzzed like a gnome device, and two cords ran into it. Then he stopped Viconia's screams short.

The floor was plain wood and the room couldn't have been more than ten feet by ten. He'd pulled two wires out of a broken orb that hung on the walls, dead and grey and dirty-glassed. Viconia blinked, standing alone in the centre with her hands raised. They could see at last.

"What foolish thing did you do—pathetic male—"

"Walked 'till I felt something real," Montaron said, "and ended it. No point to putting yourself through that kobold crap."

"The test—the test was to remember. _Valas_—" she repeated. "My brother Valas. I had a brother called Valas. He—"

"Let ye flee the Underdark? I'm not stupid enough not to piece it together." Brother; they thought of men as the weak ones down there, instead of little girls.

"I did not realise you overheard." She stamped a foot. "This place—" Other orbs hung on the walls, and some still pulsed with light and other things inside them. There were switches beside them.

She was getting _ideas_. She rubbed a sleeve across the streaked glass of one, and inside it like a crystal ball were pictures of the asylum in full, dancing ghosts asking for guardians and the Shadow Thieves dead in jars and madmen locked in cells and the group of adventurers below, cutting their way through furred monsters. The mad mage alone, sitting still in a corner. "This is how they control," Viconia said. "This place is the asylum's power. From here—_Shar, show me the way to seize the power!_"

He took apart the panels of the wall, wires and switches and grinding gears like gnome-work. And a map, etched into one of the underside of the panels; runed in some mage-tongue neither of them could read, but the switch-gears were part of the maze and changed things around. One move, and that locked the mad wizard away where he couldn't make trouble. Viconia flung herself at the orbs, whispering of what she wanted to do to the bloodsuckers and general run of all, praying for divinations.

"_This_ one— How else to find out but by testing?" she said, and flipped a switch grinning like a madwoman. "Ah, the lights, I see! High as possible then; for the burning! If it is hot enough to make flesh crinkle black, perhaps for the Lady of Night—and this one makes floors shake fit to produce earthquakes!"

"Could ye—" Montaron had hit the opposite wall, the floor still shaking; and he looked up with despair at the drow going among the orbs.

"This unlocks the cells of the mad inmates—let them roam! This does nothing—change it to full for what torments it brings! Merely waves of air blowing pages down in the mage's study—how tedious. He may have started to seek us. What power shall the next give me? Ah—a release of a devourer, umber hulk, eye tyrant, troll—to wreak havoc! This for scorching flames across the floor! This for sudden cold and ice spears! And _this_—for the emotions. Manipulation—turn one way and the emotion is despair, I can feel Shar's black night and the grave pressing in on me—"

Ye might as well give up, for— That was like that gloomy elf in Nashkel, mage-fooling, forget it and tell the drow to give it up—no, for the mage in the skin mask had already started to fight back. Viconia pressed a dial and a jet of flame spouted from the jar room's walls.

"Despair. I revel in it, for it is Shar's. Seal this room with adamant. Or this—it must be anger. Burning with irrational sentiment and blazing with unconsidered actions. Perfect for the case we are in; turning it high for the Bhaalspawn, for the vampires, for the foolish masked mage himself, may he simply—blast—" The light that slipped through the crystal ball was pure white and blazing, and Montaron still remembered to fear the one with the skin mask. "Turn this place apart at my will, for I am mistress here!"

Killing rages. Montaron spent most of his time hating the living and undead annoying and looking forward to bloodshed; he didn't trust his lifespan for mad slaying like the skin-dancers would have had it, barbarian killers who got themselves killed like that Shar-Teel wench. Viconia pulled the lever for another earthquake session, and the room's jolt slammed his skull against the back again. "_A true and killing wrath_," the Sharran repeated, triumphant, "_for the son of Bhaal—_"

The crystal ball gave visions of the asylum. Out of Benrulon's half-hin shape there came a crimson giant red in scales and golden of eye, obsidian teeth and claws reaching for and tearing apart one of the tiny companions by him, the giant tall as a mage's tower and far above ants scattered around it. And then Viconia's manipulations added a second nightmare, from the human girl in pink another monster, scaled and spiked and equally inhuman. It ran and ripped apart walls toward the bloodsuckers who had tormented it, to the mage of the jars himself; and in flames and earthquake Spellhold asylum tilted back and forth as if the winds would push it from the cliff itself. The earthquake never stopped, and the drow thrust her hand inside the bodies of the orbs and laughed as if it was all under her power.

His skull crashed heavily against a lever while purple lightning seemed to dance and fill the room, and then for a while he didn't know anything at all.

—


	15. Waking Moments

_Warning:_ Another cruelty-to-minors warning. Sorry.

—

"Oh, get up, weakling, you waste my time." The slap to his jaw brought him back; he rubbed at the bruises he could feel on his shoulders. Nothing but mess and rubble around them; orbs blown and burnt grey, levers splinted off, walls halfway down around their heads. The drow's hair was in a dusty mess behind her head and even her face wasn't clean.

"I thought I would fear being buried alive," she said thoughtfully, "but instead I feel triumph. The asylum was mine."

They gave lunatics asylums to run. "Dorn elgg ear's a death threat, isn't it?" Montaron said.

"_Ir_. Of course it is. There are times I have revenged myself very painfully—to those concerned." Viconia flicked her hair behind her back and settled her armour in place. "Make me a path over this rubble. It is useless now—and at the very least our enemies have fled. I am sure either the mage-elg'caress-vampire or the overstuffed undead rothe perished. I feel better."

Like that binding was safe for them. Could kill all they wanted now. He'd lost crossbow and smashed bottles in the upset; he still laid hand to blade. Buried her alive, in that fear of hers; he dug them a way out, and she managed to bring water from some place in the planes and dab it on hair and face. "Goes faster if ye help."

"Shar is void, the destruction we leave must be to her will." The passage beyond the control-room wasn't one they'd gone down before. It had moss on it growing by some magic, and the stink of compost not far. In a room a few dead plant-creatures lay split open and stinking, worthless spores scattered around them. Didn't sound like the Bhaalspawn's monsters were still on the rampage; run into a bloodsucker, then they'd get to kill it. If they could. Montaron could remember the twists and turns on the map to where they'd pulled down the mad mage, locked him in the asylum's depths where he belonged. Might as well fetch Xzar if he still lived, take anything that wasn't nailed down, and set the place on fire and shove it over the cliff before hunting for ship-passage in the town below.

Corridors were deserted and scarred; some by claws, some by traces of a mage-battle of some kind. Then a howling roar came to them: a surface-elf, with hair growing all over his skin.

"Halt, madman; to whom your loyalties?" Viconia called, standing ready for a casting.

"—Bad doggies took the portal! Good doggies who eat bad doggies took after them! Gateway to night, gateway to fear! Bad doggies who LICK YOUR TOENAILS OFF WITH A THOUSAND SANDPAPER LICKS! You must be figments! Don't stare at me like that, bad doggies! Hairy feet, you're a bad little doggie!"

The finger was pointed at Montaron. "Look at your own claws, werewolf," he said.

"An island curse. Was a nice young short man who saved me from it, indeed it was," the elf said. "Dradeel, navigator to mighty explorer Balduran! I was...then a curse from the bad doggies who sniff at your second-best drawers! Fancy a monkey butter muffin?"

"Who left within this portal?" Viconia asked coldly.

"Good doggies who turn into bad doggies and bad doggies who crack marrow to get at bone and do dissections with things breathing on the table, of course," the elf said. "Now, I'm afraid—the doggy nature is within me! Defend yourselves, mortals, or—arr!"

The cry turned into a wolf's howl and the werewolf flung itself at them, all fangs and fur and heavy weight. Don't let yourself get clawed by them for there was a chance it meant turning; silver and cold iron on them, and watch the way their flesh grows back. This one was only a mage. Not the faintest idea of how to fight. Behind him, Viconia chanted, but he didn't need to pay it heed. Got fast into the right position to kick up into the wolf's balls; let it howl in pain; and stabbed into the throat and up to the skull, hacking to take away head from body. Let it try growing that one back.

A bunch of dust rose up from the floor at the drow's whistling, small bones buried in the cracks of the floor. Piece by piece a human-sized skeleton shape made itself, standing by her and shuffling forward to fight. Hadn't needed it.

Asylum was all in a shambles, ripped to pieces. Montaron could remember well that vast red giant. Not easy to think of the half-hin kid as just that Bhaalspawn brat when ye knew what was in him. They came across the bloody remains of a longlimb torn in half, an arm and part of a leg and half a face that was a red mess of nothing, one or two locks of blue-coloured hair unstained at the edges. There was more blood than could've belonged to one spattered on the walls, some of it darker like it had belonged to creatures already dead. The mage's jar room was empty of the living, bodies of a dwarf and a woman and a little girl splayed across it. The girl wasn't quite human, flesh rippled at the edges like some foul shapeshifting spell; Montaron stopped to cover over the child's face. Hadn't known they stuck kids in the asylum. The bodies of the Shadow Thieves lay blank at the bottom of the broken jars, the two men and the two women of the bloodsuckers' snacking time. Searched the chests and shelves of the upper rooms; a few discarded coin pouches, tarnished weapons, one or two odd spell scrolls, potion bottles smashed and useless on the floor. The weird thing was the portal hanging glowing silver in the air, a round doorway. Then they got round to winding their way down to the mad wizard in the cellar and lockpicking him free.

"—You _did_ come back for me! After all we've shared. I thought I might have to grow daisies here ever after. I found a nice minotaur skull to serve as a plant-pot."

Marched back up, and the fool insisted he sensed the portal. "Where'd they go, mad mage?" Montaron said.

"Can't tell. Very well-crafted, though. Pretty dancing interplanar lights inside it," Xzar said. "I smell vampire going in."

"The Bhaalchild, too, according to the dead werewolf," Viconia said. "Can not such portals be modified to unknown destinations after the first has gone through?"

"Very possibly." The mad wizard touched and prodded and poked at the portal in a way that'd get them all blown to the Nine Hells sooner or later. "The empty mage with waxen wings knows his skill."

"Vengeance against the vampires would be...pleasant," Viconia said. "Yet I am against foolishness on general principles."

"Oh, where's your sense of adventure?" The mad mage gestured over the portal and drew something into a blue flask that he sniffed. "It goes somewhere there's breathable air for the likes of us, that's enough. Come on through, and keep your heads inside the interdimensional portal as much as possible!"

Knew he should've shot him in the kneecaps before. The mad wizard leaped forward before Montaron could stab him, pulling Viconia along with him in a madman's strength Montaron had escaped. He lost sight of them in the portal's swirling depths; then cursing Xzar's name and remembering both that getting a ship passage cost gold and gems and the Bhaalspawn brat would have suffered equally to what he was about to do, Montaron went in after them.

It was a seven-foot fall to the ground; he couldn't see the portal any more behind them; and it was a dark closed cave lit only by faint glowing moss on the walls. Viconia cursed in an unending scream in her tongue. Xzar lay on the ground as she kicked him in the ribs over and over again, his arms folded protectively over his face.

"_Iblith! Wael! Vith'ir! Iblith! Wael! Vith'ir! Natha zithrel draevalen! A jatha'la rothe!_"

May a thousand large critters forcibly take carnal knowledge of ye, more or less. Her steel-toed boot hit the mad wizard again. An idea of where exactly they'd fetched up had passed over Montaron. Xzar unfolded his left arm and pointed a finger at Viconia, and aimed a beam of thick green light that for the moment was blinding. She jumped back and swore again.

"_Vith'il_—dared _that_ on me? My armour, you damaged— Vile mage! You did this— Disintegration ray—" She shrieked her words as if she feared the spell, then stepped back toward him with her rage uppermost once more. "It did not damage me! Shar protected me! Be afraid, for my wrath is strong!"

The disintegration spell? Mad mage'd gotten busy, again. Seen it before—wasn't good news in any shape.

"Both of ye stop the squabble," Montaron said slowly and carefully. "Don't cast that cursed spell, wizard—damages mage-items off the corpses and they sell for less."

"—And remember who deserves to lead here!" Viconia said, standing back.

"Get up, mad mage, and keep your mouth shut," Montaron told him. "Turn the voicebox down, drow. I take it we've reached your home crib?"

"_Yes_, fool. The Underdark. Where the followers of the Spider Queen will kill me upon sight—and, if you are unlucky, take you for slaves and sell you for a few coppers before you are killed. Though it would be amusing to watch you suffer in slavery," she said, voice pitched to a tone less likely to bring a mass of enemies down on them. "Your stupidity earns it."

"Bloodsuckers and Bhaalspawn would've come this way," Montaron said. "Funny. Lead-vamp had surface-elf ears."

"I'm surprised you managed to look that far up," Viconia snapped, pulling herself together. "Nevertheless they have some goal in common with the drow or one of the lower underground races—possibly even a hatred of the foul surface darthiir, for they dislike undead. So rarely can a captive darthiir be convinced to serve in undeath, even when as slaves they wither so quickly that they are barely worth the coin. Our foes are here—unknown purpose in mind. Find their plot and gain power through them."

Everyone knew the Underdark was the stuff of nightmares. He made out well enough in dark places; but armies of drow and eye-tyrants and fish-men lurking around corners was the stuff of those fool tales they told brats to get them to shut up. When they crossed by deep cliffs so dark that the ends weren't visible, sometimes there were howls from the deep and what might have been screams. Rope bridges hung frayed across the chasms and swayed for their weight.

They could smell blood. The broken body of a black-skinned gnome lay on the road, throat ripped open and torn up for a vampire. Someone had covered the face and dragged it off to the side.

"Our prey," Viconia noted, "and a svirfneblin; a settlement must be near. No doubt they would look upon it as equal prey, for the creatures are weak." She held her head slightly higher.

"Cursed bloodsuckers," Montaron said. More than full rein to speak his mind now. "Think they can do whatever they like with ye. Ooo, we're so much classier than common ghouls and don't like wearing clothes, do exactly what we say. Bloody aristocrats. Kill all the nobs, I say."

"I am highborn; I _am_ an aristocrat." Viconia scowled down at him.

"One o' your many annoying traits," Montaron went on. "Mad mage, I don't know what he is in the Keep—it sure isn't rich—but he doesn't act it." They stumbled along the black path.

"I have a patronymic," Xzar offered. "But it doesn't matter. It's not one of the things I need to remember."

Viconia sniffed. "A name of the father. The way you surfacers use these things can be so foolish," she said, making herself superior. "With the mother, one can always be sure; I don't doubt even your weak surfacer females have private revenges on their males." They crossed between two thick cliffs; and above them instead of night sky was only more blank rock.

"Oh, it's true enough—heart of woman's black as coal and treacherous as a drow," Montaron said, for she'd left herself open.

"It's _not_, Monty. It's the same colour as heart of men, and just as squishy," Xzar said. "See the little deep gnome's heart here?"

"Put it away, mad wizard," Montaron said. It was all too couch-quieted, and the least touch of foot on pebble sent sounds skittering far away.

"How black are your own hearts?" the drow said. "Do not answer that in words. In—capable deeds." She looked up to the earth above them and crossed her arms on her chest. Buried alive, she feared. Should find their way back up to the surface knocking off anything that got in their way.

The road turned and divided in two; one side, louder noises from far ahead and the other less.

"We would impress more those who do not crave attention," Viconia said. "Take the left fork."

"Far away from Menzo-thingy, would ye say? Not your home-crib," Montaron asked her. "Just as well, for ye came out in Calimshan." Hot and messy and easy to get taken as a slave; no place he cared for, for all the pictures of dancing-girls in transparent pants with rings through navel and nipples.

"_Menzoberranzan_. The capital of the drow, if we had such a thing. The most powerful city of us all. I have told you, I did not care where I came out on the wretched surface world. The Abyss alone knows where your foolishness has dragged us." Viconia wound her white hair behind her neck, turning and twisting it in a rough tail. "The lesser races hate the drow. Be powerful enough to awe them. The drow...will kill a houseless one."

"Fake it." Drow were killers, they were taught to backstab before solid food; but the one he knew was bright and yet no brighter than any surface-elf nob-mark. "Be Lady Muckamuck from Faraway. Simple enough con if ye've the looks and the ways about ye. I was bodyguard once to a longlimb skirt trying the same thing, picking up coin from nobs who reckoned she was one of 'em. She tried to make off with all the loot before we were done, and that made it end quick for her; but it's a light enough job to pull off for a brief while."

"_Invent_ a House name. That would—not all memorise the names of all six hundred and sixty-six in each of the drow cities... If they fear reprisal they shall not attack. You, of course, will be viewed as my slaves." She smiled. "A foreign drow noble, travelling at the behest of one of the greater Houses...to ascertain proper loyalties to the Spider Queen in secret. They will fear me. They must fear me."

"I'd feared that, _mistress_," Montaron grumbled.

"That's not unpleasant to hear, halfling slave." She stalked up to the head of them, gazing at the pressing cliffs. Felt like they'd trod through a day or more; no way to tell the hours underground. The mad wizard had started to trail behind, and there was tired stiffness in the drow's body. Better not to stop in unfamiliar territory.

The path turned, and the smoke piping up from the place reached halfway up in the caves. Small houses were part-masked by caves and outcrops above, protected by a high grey rock formation.

"Svirfneblin," Viconia said. "They are weak and helpless; a houseless drow to them... Inquire of our enemies in this small place; seek lodging from them as tribute. It is never good to sleep beyond walls in the Underdark. I smell faint kuo-toa." She peeled off a strip of moist moss from the cave wall and threw it into a trickle of water winding a green way along the ground.

She stalked toward the place with nose high enough in the air for a queen, raising hands like she came without meaning them harm. Talked to a pair of armoured guards in an underground tongue; then eventually one of them ran off. They were Montaron's height or so and bald below their helmets. Pointy-eared and big-snouted like surfacer gnomes and near as black-skinned as drow.

"They have _agreed to trade_," Viconia said in Common, and pointed to him. "Empty your pack, slave."

"Trade what?" He wasn't giving up any weaponry.

"What you thieved from the kitchens, of course, fool," Viconia said. "The bacon and the surfacer bread and the hen eggs. Such things are a premium here. I, of course, do not concern myself with menial cooking."

"And if none of us did, ye'd be starved." Spellhold kitchen had turned to a mess when they'd prowled through there; milk spilled all over the place and egg smashed with the shakings of the place, servants decamped far out of there. He'd taken enough for a few days of travel.

"Do they eat moss here, or pretty mushrooms? I ate lovely luminescent mushrooms that changed colour once. They made me see the Butterfly Star Queen of the Poison Ivy Moon," Xzar said.

"They—_we_—consume mushrooms. Many of them are poisonous or give very interesting hallucinations with improper preparation by slaves. And rothe-meat. Pig's flesh holds that stronger salty taste; roast turnips and surface-cream and almonds and honey... Pathetic surfacers," the drow sneered.

Guards brought back with them the one who'd be the local gnome bigwig; potato-shaped hat turned sideways on her round head, long nose and robes topped with an iron chain of office.

"A houseless one and two surfacers? Would ye be related to the adventurers?" she said in Common. "I am mayor Goldander Blackenrock, headsgnome of this village—and we'll wish no trouble here."

Turned out the Bhaalspawn brat'd helped with a little demon problem; and had been taken to the thing the gnomes called the Light One quickly, trying to catch up to the bloodsuckers and the skin-mask in the drow city to the right-hand fork. The same Light One was meant to guard the way up to the surface, which meant they needed to pick up the directions to her.

"I am here to punish the drow city," Viconia spat out quickly. "I have no reason to lay waste to your own village when there are heretics to hunt there. Give my males and I fair trade and treatment, and you shall not be harmed."

The gnome lifted an amulet from her neck painted to look like a glowing gem on soft blue, and smiled. "I do not challenge you, my lady," she said. Another divine-fiddler; no doubt some of 'em could look and find she wasn't proper drow. Montaron moved into a formation with the three of them, in case it turned bad. "You'll find that our innkeeper accepts all forms of currency from travellers," Blackrock finished.

Coal-dusty in its bottom floors; its dark back rooms had swept stone walls and flickered with faint rush-light in a jar of thick black oil. Beds were thin stuff padded with straw. They'd fought hard enough in the asylum; past time to rest.

"Set a mage-trap," Montaron said, "exploding skull should do the trick if'n any of them get funny ideas. Then the drow animates us some skeletons if we have to fight our way out of here."

"They're short like you, Monty. The little barmaid seemed to like you," the mad mage said; the serving girl was the innkeeper's daughter, a gnome's big nose and a high voice annoying as the twittering of surface bluebirds in spring.

"What a pathetic little one," Viconia said sweetly. "Would you fetch some extra wine from her, slave? Perhaps she'd drop the price for such a daring little adventurer."

"Wouldn't want to get ye drunk and take advantage, wench," he flashed back at her. A storm of anger swept to her face.

"Or knock me unconscious first in surfacer habit! All of you are the same. Go, mad human, leave me to rest; halfling slave, fetch me something to eat."

—


	16. Silver Light

_Warning_: Chapter contains more violent sexual content. Actually, chapter contains mostly violent sexual content. Game canon is included. No svirfneblin villages were harmed during the writing process.

—

A fry-up of mushrooms with some sort of vinegar and weak beer from the deep gnomes instead of the decent surface food they'd passed away. The drow could put it away like a dwarf and never show it on her weight; ate food easily as she copulated. She set aside her cleaned second plate and drained her drink to the end, still glaring betweentimes.

"_Morimatra_ is drow wine, and it is far stronger than this illithid urine," she said. "They give it to us when we are still children; we quickly learn the strength of it. In my land in Beregost I sought to grow grapes, but the vines were a failure. The soil was too rough for the plant; my composts too late. It straggled and never reached the frame I borrowed from my neighbours as far as I knew. I had more success with parsley and lentils, though I hate lentils. In two short years I might have had dark red grapes thick and ready on the vine...or not."

Not easy to see her dirt-fingered and bent under the sun grubbing in earth. She'd left none too long after the Fist pursuing her had been killed; left with her share of the loot from the bandit camp—perhaps slightly above that, for what ye'd call her force of personality to say it mealy-mouthed.

"Are you listening to me, slave? I am not your mage, I do not talk to thin air or to rothe-headed fools." She laid down a two-tined stone fork.

"Listening. You're not the only one with pointy ears."

"Typical surfacer. I know what you are; and I know myself. In Beregost I could not find what I searched for."

_For they drove ye out for being drow...or worse?_ He wasn't stupid; he said nothing.

"I bought my land below the laws," Viconia said. "I lived on the small homestead on the outskirts of town, I wore my hood at all times and I kept myself on small needs. My neighbour was named Roran Midfallow, a stout, sunburned human farmer. I paid the male to bring me supplies, and asked him to tell me the things I needed. He never asked me why I wore a hood. Over time I lost the sensibilities of the drow. I thought that I trusted him, and I thought that it was friendship of a sort. Shar does not prohibit alliances built on common goals.

"It was a hot damp day when at last I let down my cloak, the sun dappling along the south quarter of his farmland; I could tell that he had wondered. He saw that I was drow and said nothing, only gave a warm smile. I should have known then that he had known for some time. For the past months we had spoken. He lived with two sons on his farm, growing oats and mushrooms and raising cattle. On that day he said that his older son, Jiscanan, was making a feast to burst the first button, and that I was invited. We walked to his farmhouse, where his other son, a surly oaf named Funnard, was sickling quackgrass in the front yard. Quackgrass is a vicious weed, with stronger roots than that other surfacer weed called crabgrass, though there are superficial similarities in the appearance of it. Some strength is needed to remove that noxious growth.

"Roran and I walked to his farmhouse, where smoke burned and some surfacer meal was cooking, and on the doorstep I learned his true intentions. Somebody hit me in the back of my skull, and the ground rushed up to meet me. My trust had made me grow weak. They chortled as I lost consciousness. They said how easy it had been; they congratulated each other on a fine...on a fine catch. They laughed at my pitiful state.

"I knew no more until I woke to searing pain. They had abused and tortured me while unconscious, then tried to bury my sins. I could see nothing except for the lid of a coffin. They were weak fools. They had buried me alive. A mistake not to kill me outright. Pain is the handmaiden of the drow; their tortures were as amateurish as anything you could think of, slave. They had even less idea of it than your Harpers, though they had forced their bodies on me. Males do not dare commit that against noble females of the drow."

_Dorn elgg ir._

"What did you do to them?" Montaron said.

"First I split the coffin lid and let the earth in. I clawed to the surface, swallowing dirt, my hands bleeding and two of my nails torn to the quick." She spread her neat-kept fingers on the wood of the table. "Pain did not slow me. My brief weakness did not stop me from vengeance. The surfacer fools were drunk, their fire burning, their ale flowing, toasting over their victory of the hated drow. I watched and I waited. I found simple tools. A stake from their patch of beans. An old mining mallet. A thin rope wound over those same plants. The older son, Jiscanan, left to use the outhouse. I jammed the stake in the door, trapping him inside. Then I set the building aflame. He screamed like a trapped dragazar, a pet-creature we keep chained. Roran came running, yelling to his other son. He stood helpless and drunkenly stupid before the flames. I wrapped a garrotte around his neck. I whispered to him of his mistake, and mine: he underestimated a drow. I trusted foolishly. I tightened the rope until he breathed no more.

"At last the other son, Funnard, came running with a bucket from the well. He found his father's corpse and his brother a smoldering ember, stinking like roast cattle, the fire spread to the family home and to the fields. He dropped to his knees in shock. This afforded me a height advantage as I caved his head with the mallet. I fled across the dark fields before any other surfacer could see the blaze and come running to lay the blame for it on me. Then I returned to the wilderness...and found the bodies and heavy armour of Iron Throne mercenaries murdered and left behind. I took bits and pieces that I could carry; I traded my way to Athkatla. I had only left my hood down for a moment when the foul surfacers imprisoned me there.

"Wonder not that I dislike your kind, slave. But I fear numbers of my own as you ought to fear me."

"Folk are bastards everywhere," Montaron said carefully. "Deserved all they got. Not that the likes of us come off better, in most marks' eyes."

"The likes of you have done much the same." The red-brown eyes narrowed like an old woman's while the scowl deepened. "_Perhaps_ like me, a little, but I am not weak enough to leave my opponents uncontrolled and alive."

"Watch your back. Watch theirs even closer," he said. "But I know ye know that. In the past ye were top-dog, weren't ye? All the forelock-tugging and humble slaves ye could want—for all ye nobles have your hired bloody assassins and poison-plots to keep on your toes—"

"You could hardly imagine it, crude one."

"—And then you get dumped in the shit-heap with the rest of us commoners. And enough folk who've seen your kin in action. But pity's a thing ye'd say only beggars want."

"_Iblith_."

Beer was squidmouth piss; not strong enough to compel anyone. "There're a few things I don't like doing. A few things ye have to do, to stay alive and punish the folk that think o' you as prey. Tends to be everyone sooner or later."

"You're quoting classic drow proverbs at me, unlearned one." Viconia paced the floors of the gnomish inn. "I allowed those foolish surfacers to take nothing from me. A human merchant on the road to Amn, who traded favourably with me; he was young and virile. The vampires were tedious and impotent unless they had very recently feasted; in boredom I turned to you once more, slave. I still amuse myself with lust. Do you fear me?"

"Would if I were fool enough to trust ye with the loot. But then I'd like enough be fool enough not to."

"I wonder what you would be like broken, slave," she said. "You act as if you feel little. Deaths of others and the needs of the flesh become your goals. Perhaps you would yield quickly and try to feign obedience until your master left an open space in the back—or perhaps you would not be able to resist defiance, claim otherwise though you might. It could be interesting."

"Do what ye like, drow, and I'll do the same. Bed the innkeeper's daughter yourself if ye please, or the mad mage if ye can silence him from screaming."

"No," Viconia DeVir said, "do as I say; I will bed you, little man. We served the asylum well."

—

It fell cold; they'd not rested; she glared at him below her nest of rough blankets. Always liked more than a rightful share. Her skin was close to cold as a bloodsucker's but grew warm over time. It was heated now; his head was between her breasts. Soon enough he'd be ready again.

"Don't paw. And don't lie on preferring the overstuffed human shape, male." She pushed her fingers into bruises already made on his shoulder.

She wasn't near as delicate as she looked, or as she whined on the road. Grey as a cross between stone and ice. You learned quick how folk moved for a fight, especially in a world of tallfolk; and how fool they were to leave those gaps where it was easy to weave under and strike them where it counted. She was the one for this sort of thing. His hands moved lower, across the drow's taut skin over her stomach. The words, 'too good for the likes of', would flash in him, and yet there was no sense in wasting time on that thought. Something about strength and cruelty and spitting in the face of those who thought they'd gotten rid of the halfling or the blackheart drow.

She lifted herself on her elbows, turning like a snake about to snare a meal. Half fey and half cruel, flashing between moods and poses quick as water-changing.

"When you stepped through that portal, slave," she muttered, groggy as if drunk after all, "for which—I wonder—" Her voice faded. Didn't much matter. He felt lower and lower still, past sweat-soaked and wet skin. She let herself back down and brushed over him. The touching was more than enough for more action between them and she reached behind his back, fingernails digging in like daggers. Blood stained the sheets and it seemed all smelt of copper.

"For it matters not," Viconia whispered, her muscles gone slack-twisted, splayed and softened with a leg wrapped around him. "The mage makes a useful tool—"

"Ye weren't thinking about him moments ago." Hard to read, near-impossible to read what went on inside her, but he'd felt her shakes from her centre and her snapping in like a vise. Doubtful a horde of umber hulks falling from the roof could've been a distraction at that point.

"You were passable. Slave." She didn't move; the blood in her pulsed like a bird's wing-beats. Never tamed, o' course. He touched that spot above her thigh-bone. "It's only that... Your mage is so terribly far from attractive." She let him finger her a way he wouldn't have done to a paid woman, barely listening to her. "Broken. He comes already broken. From the point of view of a master, that could be quite interesting."

Then she bent her head to his neck and near acted like a bloodsucker. Like she wanted him to respond she continued talking when she was done.

"Madness is his refuge. He would retreat to his madness in pain, using oblivion and delusion to forget all. You might break, male; he is shattered. Everything breaks down here in the Underdark."

"Ye'd know," he muttered, to head her off snapping something to that effect. Couldn't give a proper fight if ye already thought the whoresons would win. His hands ran along her ribcage. He wasn't tired enough to give in.

"The markings would be my key, for your necromancer. He hides behind them. I believe him when he claims to have chosen them; he's not a talented liar, acting as a seer to the truth as he imagines it. He wears a mask of chaos that he thinks protects him from others. Symbols can be so important to the weak-minded," Viconia said.

"I think I would start," she continued, "as for any slave with some hedge-arcane craft, by breaking his fingers. Gag him; bind him spread-eagled and immobile. Perhaps break the feet, too. I would place numbing spells to hide the pain until I desired to lift them. Be lighter, slave; you're capable of fingering mere _locks_.

"Then wait for him to wake up, touching him naked and helpless and able to do nothing to control it. That alone would make your mage scream, if he were not silenced. Tell him something of my plans, for those with imagination always know how to use it to torment themselves." Viconia leaned out, her chest rising and falling, staring into the distance. Her left hand patted Montaron's cheek.

"Lift the knife; bring it down; and one by one cut around those markings so conveniently left as a map," she said. "Flay the skin and slowly heal it, as if anything he chose to do to himself ended at my whim. Place the tattooed remains in a jar. He is not handsome, our young necromancer. I doubt he should be any more so with clean skin. But he would be _upset_ by it. If I could not terrify him away from remembering any spell by then I would be very disappointed in myself. This would make me able to remove the gag—a silence prayer to make sure; take the parts I cut away; and feed him his own skin piece by piece. He'd eat himself. No retrieval of his own space." She shifted position. Montaron paid attention to her body beyond her words.

"And then I could move on to see what other pains would amuse me, removing all numbing," Viconia said. Her nails scraped across his chest, heading downward. "Playing with bones already broken almost always causes a reaction; and there are so many small bones in the hands that a priestess can choose to shatter, one at a time, always making sure she has missed none. Or there are some very interesting torments that can be inflicted with only a slim quill pen..." Her hand crept to his shaft, and that was enough of the talking.

—


	17. Caverns

"_Little ones_," the silver dragon said, "_how dare you enter my lair?_"

Montaron's fingers almost flickered into a rough try at a salute. "Followin' after Benrulon, yer worship. Ma'am and all that." Ye didn't like licking boots, be they Zhent lord or bloodsucker or bloody dragon. "The young half-hin fellow sent your way. Travelling with a wizard in fancy red robes, priest in armour, whining human girl. Pair of whining human girls."

"To destroy him or befriend him, frail one?" The dragon's eyes were moonstone-white instead of metal-silver like her body; milky and watery and about two-thirds as high across as he was. A huge thing, bigger than the shadow dragon; and they'd not had to face that one in a fight.

Ye saw a dragon, long polished claws and scales and forefeet and chest; then your eyes travelled higher and higher to see that the thing was the size of a mountain; then the mighty wings, stretched across twice as wide as the body itself, folded bribed up in harsh bone and diamond-sharp scale between them; and ye begged to all the Nine Hells that the mad wizard wasn't thinking anything close to, _Let's get ourselves messily killed trying to kill a silver dragon, Monty!_ Or in any way letting his aims out to the dragon its—herself, as it were, and that changed nothing on how deadly she was.

The Light One, the gnomes called her; and he wished they hadn't troubled to rescue the innkeeper's son for the favour of the meeting.

"Got separated from them back in the asylum way." Best to gamble that the boy's ways got him well with the silver dragon; svirfneblin words were that he acted like he'd got over the giant-monster-creature and turned back to something like his useless self. "Ye have the way to the surface? If we could pass, we'd bother ye no longer."

"The dark one among you serves Shar," Adalon said. Viconia's lips thinned and she folded her arms like a housewife would've covered some indecent exposure.

"She's not from around here. Not any more," Montaron said. The fool mad wizard was humming under his breath; it was near as distracting as the dragon herself. As long as he wasn't trying some spell.

"Mean him no harm, lady. Volunteered to help you, did he? Good for him and we've no wish likewise to be troublesome."

"The spawn of Bhaal is retrieving my _eggs_." The dragon's head suddenly leaned forward. Her teeth were larger and brighter than those of the shadow dragon below the Umar Hills. "I do you vast honour to speak at all! You _will_ be silent and listen. The yochlol have come to the city."

Xzar stopped the humming and started listening. Viconia startled and raised her hands. Word meant something to them—

"They seek renegades to their vile goddess. They seek my children to be their sacrifice. You will aid the Bhaalspawn in removing them, or I will have your heads. I will freeze your bodies in ice and bury you unmarked in stone. I trust none of you; but you will serve for my purpose. Speak now if you wish to be eaten first."

"Shar will protect me from the Spider Queen," Viconia whispered, and clutched her symbol.

"Remain still and feel my breath," Adalon said.

Masked wizard and bloodsucker had stolen her eggs, and Montaron didn't care one bit. The drow folk had gotten to move free up to the surface and raid the other pointy-ears up there for the masked mage's army, and Montaron didn't give a damn for either side. Bhaalspawn brat had his soul sucked away, and Montaron couldn't have cared less for how fool-addled it'd turned him. Adalon did a freakish transmutation spell on them that made it feel as if his bones turned to water and melted away, then stretched out painful as if he were drawn on a rack. His armour grew with him like a second skin, and the ground and the pit of his stomach fell deep down alike. His feet prickled as if the hair had turned to grow inside them. It was done at last and he could have screeched and damned the dark back of his palms. He looked like one of them now, curse the day; no choice but to join them or never get out of these caves.

"My hands are not mine!" the mad wizard shrieked. "The bunnies have eaten my real hands!"

"Come now, mad mage," Montaron growled. He grabbed an arm. It was easier when they were close on the same height; Xzar had gone shorter than when he was human. The mage-drow wore no markings on his face and had a spider border to his robes and wore a long slit in their side, though the mad stare was the same as always. Viconia's clothes were different, armour laced with dark red instead of purple, and her eyes bright scarlet in place of dull red-brown. He'd be blackskin all over himself, still pointy-eared, and a few inches taller than Viconia. They left Adalon's lair all but falling over each other.

"Shar has a purpose," Viconia said to herself. "Shar always has a purpose. Shar must have meant me to be guided here. Dragged here by a fool of a mad male slave." She aimed a sharp kick at Xzar's shin and made the mad wizard fall, whining of the pain. "Yochlol are the Spider Queen's handmaids," she said louder, explaining it to them. "They are demons of the Abyss. They alter shape, from priestess to black widow spider to their true forms of the seeming of melted wax. They are hunters, and once they taste your scent they do not allow you to go free even in death. They root out all heretics and unbelievers; and after they kill you your soul is their slave ever after, your ghost eaten by their children over and over again. I did not have them pursue me before. I thought that I was fortunate.

"But Shar will protect me if I have faith in her," she said again.

And she was wrong, Montaron reckoned. Gods up there weren't paying attention to every mortal's fool move. Not like Shar'd reach a hand down and snatch up the drow—the _real_drow—when she stuck a foot wrong. Oh, he'd say a prayer or two to Mask and even spend a few days on his knees if he thought it'd help save them—but, Mask give him shadows to hide and kidneys to drive his blade deep in, ye shouldn't count on finger-wiggling and chants.

"It's a transmogrification, mad mage, ye could cast 'em yourself," he said to stop the crazy wizard complaining of what he'd become. Speaking the words felt different once they left his mouth; the language had changed away from Common without him knowing it.

"Oh, Monty, too right. She must be expert in magic. Some dragons are like that. I need to think about her." Xzar's hands scraped along his robes trying to fix the fit and he got up again. "Dragon eggs would burst scales on toast soldiers."

"You resemble male drow, but males are still slaves; so do not believe for one instant that you have been raised any higher than your nature," Viconia said. "You will both be my slaves taken in battle with a rival House, for neither of you behave as if you were a relation of mine—or look so, for that matter. By Shar," she continued, "most certainly not." Her right hand snaked up and grabbed Montaron's ear. "We drow are the noblest race upon Faerun: graceful, neither too tall nor too short, smooth-skinned, eternally young, clean and proud—and you two—"

She hauled him to a shallow pool not far between the rocks, faintly lit by glowing moss. He'd the face of a dark-elf pretty-boy in the reflection, damn it; short white hair upturned and tousled behind his head, scowling, the scars on his face gone faint, dark armour covering him, the female drow bending his ear. "A few minutes in drow form and hopelessly unkempt already. You could wrinkle a new set of clothing by looking at it, male."

"Shame you're short for a drow, isn't it? Ye've said women are meant to be high-ups."

"Size means nothing. Your shoulders were slightly broader in your own shape, slave." She let go of the ear and in the reflection of the pond she ran her hands along the warrior drow's muscles. "I wonder how easily they scar in this form."

"Like I haven't killed longlimb pointy-ear before. I know how they bleed."

"Do it upon my orders, slave," she said. "You'll do everything upon my orders, here."

—

"—Three drow up ahead. Two female, one male, armed. Crest's a spider crossed with two swords." Montaron stepped back behind the rocks. Less easy to hide taller, and it was too easy to forget the heights that were enough to get behind.

"Drow magic. You can do all sorts of things down here that none in the surface world know of; magical lore, the deep caverns of the bunnies, darkness-spells and levitation-spells and dweomered-adamantite..." Xzar rubbed his hands together in enthusiasm, talking in their hiding-place.

"Most of our arcane magic fails to continue to work in the surface world, so you will find them useless," Viconia said. "And I think you should simply not talk at all here, hmm? Except when you are ordered to cast a spell."

"You're quite clever, and I believe you on your home territory," the mad mage said. "But—that's where we differ. If magery is an art then knowledge must be learned even if it does not serve an immediate purpose."

And that was why the mad wizard was worthless, for he wasted time. Viconia's contempt was glass-twinned to his own. "What am I seeing, woman?" Montaron said.

"Members of the Fighters' society. A patrol, perhaps. We near Ust Natha," Viconia said. "It would appear weak to ask for escort; but to greet them might gather some information. The heretics to the Queen of the Demonweb Pits I seek," she went on, "are more likely in higher levels of society: the rot of disloyalty setting in as redmoss on mushrooms, or as a slight small crack that will ruin the finest of jars or vases, or indeed a single foolish slave blaspheming a spider's web by faintest touch..."

In the darkness he saw the flicker behind them too. "Yes, mistress," Montaron said smartly. "Whatever ye wish."

"_I_," said another female voice, "demand your immediate aid."

The woman stepped out from the shadows, carrying a long black blade with a spider's fangs pointing over the hilt.

"For what purpose, female? I, Veldriss, cannot accept a role without understanding how it serves our mistress," Viconia said calmly, showing the other drow that she'd sensed the approach.

"As a foreigner you are dregs in Ust Natha, and so it well becomes you to honour my demands," the other drow said. "But I will tell you that Solaufein of the Male Fighters' Society is the male servitor dispatched to retrieve the high priestess Phaere; for the Matron Mother we aid him; and you travellers happen upon exactly the correct path."

"We simply approached the city, warrior. There we intend to meet with the mercenary Veldrin," Viconia said.

"'Veldrin'—I see." The female drow shrugged her shoulders. "Taking a regrettably long time among the kuo-toa. Perhaps they are less capable mercenaries than they impressed Matron Ardulace. Are you one of them?"

"Only a fellow traveller who desires to meet with them. Among others," Viconia said. "What did you have in mind for the aid you need, female?"

"The aid that should lift but one or two drops of sweat from my forehead; for foreigners like you are so easy for use," the other drow said. "Bring your slaves. Solaufein is our caster and he holds the devourers to this plane. You may help us to kill them."

"Squidfolk," Montaron said. "Yer taking us to tangle with squidfolk." That ate your brains from inside your skull.

"Your slave forgets his place," the other drow said, looking funny at him.

"Yes, he does, and if he does not perish in battle then for a while afterward he will wish that he had," Viconia said. He'd the strong suspicion she meant it. "On the other hand, it is my preference to keep useful slaves. Let us fight without wasting further time on pathetic males."

The male drow had worn a cloak and light armour in place of a mage's robe, carrying two curved swords on his belt like he thought he was bloody do'Urden or somesuch. His hands were raised in the air and he started a chant that Xzar watched too closely until Montaron dragged him back.

Viconia started chanting up, and sticks rose up from the ground; sticks-and-stones, old bones. The mad mage did alike, for critters without brains were best to sic on the likes of squidmouths. Must've been killings aplenty here before. The three females unsheathed blades in the same movement without looking at each other. He glanced at Viconia to see if she'd noticed it—no doubt the mad mage couldn't—but she gave no sign. They stood behind the undead in a perfect formation. The Sharran glared at him to step forward the same. Falzress; Beliavor; Lalrichten. Mistresses all, he thought sourly. Squidfolk; they messed with your head with shocks and confusions and the whips out of their heads. They were supposed to bleed like any other, and they favoured going after mages and the like for the grey stuff inside their skulls.

The caster drow made more cries into things only he could see, and then Montaron saw the illithids slip out of thin air with another drow between them. They were taller than drow, taller than him; manlike in robes that covered everything with dark blue tentacles coming out of their heads like long beards. The middle female drow cast a spell that settled over her and her friends' heads in a raddled blue glow. He felt Xzar fling some added speed over him.

The undead were supposed to be first, but the squids tried to get past them. They attacked with their tentacles that left marks on the bones, and almost stupidly fast the three female drow dived into the fight. They grouped on top of the first squidmouth and sliced it to fish-pieces.

Tentacles lashed out toward his head. Montaron got his sword up in time, then wound the mass of squid mouth in a ring around the blade as if he was looping a coil of rope. Then he was close, and stabbed down with the other short sword into the chest at the same time as the first point went into the face. The blood was red as any other creature, fountaining out in a river. He'd wounded most of the tentacles, but it still tried to reach him. Xzar aimed a row of missiles into its hide and the illithid went still. He went for the next one, cursing that the height of a drow gave them more to aim at. The squidmouths' drow captive on the ground spoke a few words and one of them exploded in dark fire—a lesson that not one of 'em was helpless. She pulled herself to her feet and made her hands glow red.

Another of the illithids looked like it was casting; Montaron went for it. The gestures stopped and this time one of the tentacles scalded his forehead. He felt his mind go blank—

_Curse it—turning to the mad wizard—forgot what—drow pretty blade sharp—_

Chanting, cool and clear, broke through. "Recover yourself, slave! Don't dare to babble!" Viconia cried.

_—Yeah, she can't risk me talking—_

He planted a blade into the squidmouth's groin, but it acted as if they'd no parts. But there was blood enough in the throat, and from behind one of the skeleton warriors brought a heavy blade down on the mindflayer's skull. The female fighters had finished the others off, and Solaufein the caster lowered his hands and smirked as if it'd been all his work. Montaron wiped the blood from the swords.

"Who are these commoners, Solaufein?" the rescued drow said, a hand on her hips and no gratitude for being rescued. "Your arrival was late. Ardulace should not have sent such a pathetic male."

He gave her a fancy bow. "You're welcome, lady Phaere. Common mercenaries."

"I am already weary of the sight of you, male. I will return to the city; you may do as you wish with these bodies." She turned off with the same high head as Viconia.

"Lady Phaere, it is dangerous," the mage-drow protested, "oh, for—for widow's sake— Thank you for your aid, mercenaries. I will follow after her lest another disaster befall her and Ardulace has my head."

"Devourer bodies mean nothing to us. We do the same, Solaufein of Ust Natha; and we ask the foreigners to follow likewise," the one called Falzress said.

The paths widened and Montaron saw a large black bridge made of some ironlike stuff showing the way through two huge gates to the drow city. They were guarded by a pair of male drow in heavy armour, standing lookout. The three fighting women swaggered like mercenaries everywhere. The same, more or less, that he put on and exaggerated in his own shape, because it took time and learning at blade's point for them not to step over the halfling. Had to tone it down.

"Your warrior slave is quite well-muscled," said the one called Beliavor. "And moderately competent in the field."

"I prefer the look of your mage, Veldriss," the drow called Lalrichten said. "Scrawny, but wiry. And such a wild wanton look in his eyes." Xzar didn't look at them.

The three of them were pretty women by anyone's standards; a touch stinking from squidfolk blood and sweat, on the flat-chested side, but delicate-featured as any other elf. And still he could've done without their eyes looking him and Xzar over, not only for one mistake before their cover was blown.

"Will you need any help disciplining the fighter, Veldriss?" Falzress said. "I can direct you to a stallkeeper with some elegant whips and other devices. Was it you who gave him the scars I can see?" And she moved in for a grope, as if it were him feeling up a whore. But it was cold and more like a slaver checking merchandise than lust. It tempted him to slam an elbow to the bitch's face.

"It was," Viconia said. "Maungrin can be a slow learner, female. But he and Zavor are loyal to me since the destruction of their House."

"Which would that have been?" Falzress said, shifting place to chat to Viconia.

"De'Glabizu," she reeled off, and the name seemed to pass muster well enough.

"Then you are from Menzoberranzan. I heard of that two hundred years ago," Falzress said. "It was never stated who completed that one."

"That would be revealing too many secrets," Viconia said, teeth flashing white in the dark of the place. "Various alliances; various independents. All irrelevant detail, of course. And your House?"

"We are but mercenaries fortunate enough to bear a contract from the Female Fighters' Society," Falzress said. "I would suggest a glass of morimatra with us in our lodging there, female; you can have found nowhere to stay as yet."

"Your generosity is too simple, when I would impinge by interrogating you upon the history of Solaufein and the Matron Mother's daughter," Viconia said.

"We have fought together, sister. Come," Falzress said, and her smile stretched wide.

They passed through the gates with a sharp-barked order from Falzress. The tilings of the city had an old look to them, the paint and ridges on them worn off by time. Drow and others roamed the streets, more others that he'd expected: deep-gnome and duergar and dwarf and the odd human, goblin and gnoll and other monsters, fetching and carrying and begging. More slaves than drow, it seemed. Female drow wore priestess robes or armour, male armour or plain cloth. The gates and walls were tall and practically unclimbable, he calculated, too much slippery metal and sharp spikes. No way out of this until they'd done as asked. Xzar watched the city, seeing gods knew what in his madman's visions.

"Maungrin," he said quietly, "is it just me, or is the lady Beliavor of arcane arts as well as martial?"

Seemed he hadn't expected an answer. The stupid drow mage robe shifted to show more of the mad wizard than he'd ever wanted to see. Montaron turned his head quickly to eye a group of female soldiers patrolling the streets. There were noises and a crowd like a marketplace was here, close to the gates—like trading parties came often enough. That'd mean opening and closing of gates and confusion enough for any half-decent rogue to get through the crowds.

"A transparent device, slave," Beliavor said. "You seem to pretend to worthless powers over death. A pointless specialisation if your priestess is powerful, no?"

Which would be subtle drowspeak for 'we're thinking of killing you pitiful worms'. "Different emphasis," Xzar said, waving his hands in the air and trying to salvage it. "Many things divine ch...divine usage does that I think are conceptually complicated beyond the present arcane grain of control; but the unravelling processes are different when enemies are encountered. The school emphasises the gathering of arcane knowledge..."

"Some of your spells seem to be of an interesting style," Beliavor said.

"As do some of yours." The mad mage managed to smile at her.

"A boot-licking compliment? You begin to bore me, male," the drow said, and shoved him away from her with a swift push. Montaron didn't move to stop Xzar from swaying, but grabbed him after. Xzar stopped and stared at something else, a large tank set up in a street corner like some drow was selling fish or an aquarium or sea-devil slaves, depending.

"Silence, males," Viconia said. "Don't add to your due punishments."

There was a grey-haired dwarf being whipped on the market streets, full in the open; a drow male carried one of the snake-headed whips. The dwarf fell and didn't rise again, as if the poor bastard was dead at last. A heavy smell hung on the air and Montaron recognised it as much the same dung ye found on the surface: the source being slaves caged up in dirty straw and sold in the open market. Besides gnolls and trolls he spotted a bunch of chained drow who looked half-starved.

"You show an interest in acquiring new slaves, sister?" Beliavor said. Viconia watched the drow on offer, then turned her head.

"They appear weak and no doubt they are," she said. "I have no use for meat I'd have to pamper and feed for months before it was fit for the slightest service. You keep no slaves of your own, Falzress?"

"She wore out a human barbarian last night," Lalrichten said, smirking. "I think the ones with too many muscles are deceptive. You think you're getting far more than you are."

Viconia picked up her pace of walking away. "It is muscles and defiance both that in my experience are best," she said, running on about things he'd heard her say before. "Without the latter the former is worth less than nothing. Breaking in the large ones can be enjoyable if you choose carefully; with the proper spirit they do last longer than the physically weak ones in the main."

"Perhaps I will buy a surface elf, if Matron Mother Ardulace succeeds enough in her raids to bring some in chains," Falzress said. "I haven't had the chance before. It is meant to be the experience of our race."

"I have, once; novelty and nothing else," Viconia said. "They cannot bear the dark, poor things."

The four drow shared a short laugh.

"The Female Fighter Society is two streets from here," Falzress said. "It is the tall one."

Like layers of mushroom-head piled on each other, Montaron thought. Guarded by a pack of female drow in glittering armour. It rose up from the streets much less shabby than the places around it; must still be some poor quarter of the city, whatever Falzress liked to boast about it. Outside a nearby tavern a male drow had been shouting about gladiator contests and male pleasure slaves.

He studied the three of them again, trying to figure what they knew and didn't. Falzress seemed the leader, tallest and wearing her hair back in two braids, pointy-chinned and the one who'd walked through the shadows to spot them. Beliavor was a caster, plump-cheeked for a drow and thinner-lipped than Viconia. Lalrichten was shorter but broader-built, long-nosed and light-eyed. They'd the same design of sword and same trick of all moving their heads or blades at the same time when things were happening. He might've picked them for sisters or half-sisters, though in drow they might as well be mother and daughters.

"Come for a glass with us," Falzress repeated, and brought them up stairs to a room with a view out over the city. The door she closed behind was thick stone that was barred on the inside.

"If you don't mind me practising a few of my priest's incantations," Viconia said pleasantly.

"Lloth watches best over those who watch themselves," Falzress said, and pulled out a bottle and glasses from a cupboard on the wall. The room was bare aside from a stone table and metallic stools. A tapestry hung on one wall that showed the spider-crest of the drow goddess, and the opposite wall was blank aside from a silvery mirror that looked to have a watery film across its glass. The cupboard was wood, which'd mean expensive down here; but either these mercs hadn't picked up jobs lately or liked to save it all. Montaron watched for what he ought to be doing, hand around glasses like some fool butler; Viconia gave him a signal and he thought he was fast enough to stop suspicion going on. The mad mage stood quietly in a corner, eyes darting between that mirror and the open window every so often. Ye could leap down there and live, though you'd like as not break a bone or two.

"To the Spider Queen," Viconia promised cheerfully enough, and tasted her glass only after Falzress had done it first. It wasn't like they'd offer any to him or Xzar. "You must allow me to entertain you in the tavern on the morrow."

"That we may," said Lalrichten, glancing briefly across at that unnatural mirror. "Of course; that is only if Lloth grants us all another day, isn't it?"

—


	18. Ust Natha Flares

It was that damn mirror up on the wall. Mad-mage studying it; drow fighters seeking its direction every so often; the Sharran following the example. Viconia ordered him to pour another glass of wine.

"It's where," Falzress said, her glass halfway drained, "the mirror showed your slave half-shadowed. It's quite powerful. And where, of course, you also stand in shadow—for you were not sent by the Spider Queen to find heretics. We were."

"My true name," said Beliavor, "is Zhariuelil." Her face slipped and melted into something else, and fiddling with the door behind them only had it grow thicker and start to burn with unnatural heat.

"I am Vleirelyue," said Lalrichten, her face turning the same, still a drow, this one identical and near-bland for all it was comely enough.

"Kessilvyabah," said Falzress, and laid down the glass for good. "Stand up, Sharran, and see the revealed truth."

Viconia obeyed them like it was a bardic compulsion, and Montaron felt his own arms shaking and his muscles failing to work. She stood. Between the three identical sisters and in the light of the mirror her shape danced between spider-worshipper and black-circled Sharran. Her ioun stone continued to float around her pale hair.

"We say our true names before we fight," said Kessilvyabah, "so that the victim will always know that we wait for them."

"That we exist an eternity," said Zhariuelil.

"That in the Demonweb Pits with us will be your punishment," Vleirelyue said.

"Handmaidens," said Kessilvyabah, and drew her sword at precisely the same moment as the other two. The mirror flickered. "Viconia DeVir of Shar," she said, and in its reflection yet another Viconia wore sigil and armour of another time and loyalty, standing over a part-drow babe laid out on an altar.

"Sister to Valas the drider," Zhariuelil said.

"Pathetic victim of surfacer humans," Vleirelyue said, "and mere pawn to the silver one."

"Yochlol," Viconia said, and raised her hands to cover her face. "Lloth has come for her vengeance at last. Do what you will." She raised her head; she left an open neck; and it wasn't for the sake of a plan.

"It's a shame she signalled me to poison your wine that second round," Montaron said. Three identical faces rotated to stare across at him, and it looked like the bones in their necks twisted into a new shape instead of the joints moving.

"No venom may slay us, for toxin runs in our veins in place of blood," Kessilvyabah said.

"Were you not listening or never told, imposter worm? We are black widows in one of our forms," said Zhariuelil, and opened her mouth to show dark teeth in place of white.

"We are poison living and true," Vleirelyue said. Black stuff dripped down her bare arm, and he didn't doubt it could do a painful death. "These cannot give us a worthy fight, sisters. Let's impale them and watch them bleed out."

Xzar finished a gesture. The fineground fragments of sunstone bullets in the demons' gullets exploded. Just as he'd planned to use on the bloodsuckers if he ever got a chance.

It seemed to work near as well on demons of underground goddesses. By which, bits of their skin and flesh fell off in a sudden explosion and they lost their shape entirely to turn to three large waxen lumps that Viconia had warned about.

If Zhents expected demon-fighting, there'd have to be at least three carts' worth of hazard pay in platinum and preferably a high priest or two and several sane mages there for backup. The yochlol stunk like what they were, something far deep in dead remains and hellplanes, and the wax tentacles grasped at the Sharran drow between them. Viconia got enough of herself together to spin her mace in a circle and weave back from them, for it was mostly her they wanted and watched.

"Morimatra is the specialised drow wine manufactured only in the Underdark made from mushrooms as a base. It is rare and considered a delicacy for its rarity in our surface world," Xzar recited. He closed his eyes. "Heavily spiced, Morimatra possesses an acidic base and is strongly recommended to accompany rare, bloody venison of strong flavour or similar, or else to cook lamb or fish in as a vinegar-like flavoured sauce. Older Morimatra tends to be full-bodied and with a spiky residue of sediment mixed throughout; more recent Morimatra is thinner and more immediately striking in flavour.

"Incidentally, to remove wax stains upon one's robes that result from various late-night experiments, vinegar is much recommended."

Then a disembodied green mage-hand of the mad wizard raised what was left of the wine bottle in the air; and did some alchemy-fiddlings with it. Montaron cut through a pair of wax tentacles that lashed toward them. They wriggled around and moved their way back to the unformed lumps on the ground, but then a volume of some liquid splashed down on the shapes. They didn't die but they started burning.

Viconia had made it to the other side of the room, clearing a space for herself by swinging her mace. "Shar," she said, "or— Helps those who help themselves, indeed— _Bring flame down upon them!_" she called, and a torrent of dark stuff good enough for the mad mage struck down on the first of the wax monsters. Then it was gone, bubbling first into liquid and then to nothing at all. The other two switched directions to go after her lest she holy-flame again.

Xzar snapped his fingers and wrapped himself in stone for skin, then reached out a hand for one of the demons and started chanting. Montaron drove swords into the wax, over and over, keeping it for a distraction if nothing else. There wasn't time to think and each drip of it burned him. Set it on fire the old-fashioned way, he thought, but when he started with the tinderbox he wasn't sure if that changed the melting wax. Then Xzar's spell finished—

"They call the priest's spell _Harm_, and because hurting people is simpler the arcane arts can replicate it better thank you very much..."

A piece of molten wax threw the mad wizard across the room and left deep marks on him, the stone gone off from his skin. But the thing was wounded. Montaron stabbed down into parts of it, Corthala's blade and a dweomered thing he'd taken from the asylum ruins, slicing apart a red part of the wax thing that tried to melt together. Then it split up and bled to the floor like it was weeping tears, and started vanishing away.

The third stopped where it was backing down Viconia and wove its tentacles high in the air. They spun into a strange shape; Montaron set blades across it in case that'd work.

"It casts!" Viconia said. "Mage, end—"

A line of dweomered missiles fell into the wax flesh. Then around them all was a pale blue webbing through the air that cut like razorblades when they tried to move. A wax tentacle fixed itself on Viconia's head and shifted to cover her mouth and nose.

Montaron lunged forward and cut it off. His arm bled; the mad mage aimed a flaming arrow to the demon's back. The wax sizzled. Viconia wrenched the thing from her burned face and tried to heal herself. He distracted it and tried to slash fast enough to do it harm. Acid came next from Xzar's hands and that worked into the wax. He burned and bled all over.

The Sharran'd managed to get up, and got out powdered silver from her armour. She ran like a skink from a crow around the demon and dropped the stuff in a circle, throwing herself between the webs. She tripped and fell to the ground with a bleeding shin, and started to chant. Pale blue light snapped around the circle and knocked Montaron back while it burned him too. He'd seen the like from god-bothering priest in the past, protectin' from creatures of evil and it tended to hurt him too when it was done—

"It won't last," Viconia said quickly. "Finish it. Finish it now. Slaves." A spell of Xzar's made it across the silver line. Montaron pulled himself up and thrust himself into the bedroom alcove of an unlocked door. Beds didn't look slept in, but gathering dust under there was more wine, more stuff for the mad mage.

"Same vinegar trick," he said, chucking one and then the other in Xzar's direction. Too bad the mad mage didn't have a disintegration at hand, but he was never one to be useful. The wax form shook and bubbled like it was trying to turn into something else. Viconia clutched the neckline of her armour and on the other side of the sealed door there were noises. Seemed it was still sealed. The wax tentacles kept trying to cross the circle and the silver dust was turning black bit by bit.

Wine-acid fell from above and bubbled on the wax form. It drooped and dropped down in size to a littler thing. Viconia went forward and stuck her mace down on it the moment the silver gave way, and splattered parts of it apart. The mad mage went forward with his dagger gleaming silver, and bit by bit wax steamed and skin boiled and tentacles fell apart. It bubbled away same as the other two, and the stench of it lessened. There were still curious noises behind the sealed door. Montaron bent a moment to the black on the floor. Those were drow, they wouldn't break in so much as wait for a winner of some little fight and swoop in when they knew the victor was weak enough for spoils...

The mad wizard made a grab for that blasted mirror and they took the window. Slid and scraped down a sloping part of the roof and came to a painful jolt on the ground with nothing stronger than a cheap sanctuary spell protecting them. It jarred bones, but they'd taken the fall; and ran like madmen for some corner, any corner, to hide. They doubled back and hid a trail and found themselves in a burned unrepaired shell of a building, down in Ust Natha's meanest streets with few drow and a populace of lost kobolds to humans wandering fearfully around.

"Sometimes slaves who were absent at the fall of their masters find themselves free of any who care to secure them," Viconia said, coldly reciting things. "Sometimes a few come to drow cities as traders rather than slaves, and find themselves separated or impoverished. Sometimes masters could not be troubled to waste the time killing a useless slave and send them out of the house as a beggar. Some surfacer fools even pursue quests here for the sake of our drow arts and magics—or drow allure. Some drow commoners find themselves able to do nothing whatsoever to improve their station and sink to this level. Thus slums and pits such as these are the home of the weak, the misfit, and the cast-out in the form of mercy that grants years of misery."

"—Feel almost at home," Montaron said. His right leg was striped by deep burns; he drew out some of their water to spread over it. Hurt worse when there was more of it to hurt, most likely.

"You would, slave," Viconia said. "The yochlol are... I knew they would come for me. I knew the Spider Queen would never forgive my abandonment of her. She spins her weave and even in her madness worse than the mage does not forget for one moment those who slight her, even without meaning or will. The Spider Queen makes her yochlol handmaidens speak their names before they kill one, so that the victim will always know they have tormenters whose existence will never end nor will their trail grow cold. She transformed Valas to one of her creatures. No mercy waits. Never mercy." She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees and stared blankly into the slum's walls.

"It was my brother's child," she said after a breath of time had passed. "Valas' child with a human slave he favoured overmuch. I remember the female was dark for a human and quite comely, and he liked to spare her from whipping by claiming her value as a pleasure slave. Diluting the honour of the race by careless reproduction is frowned upon. Perhaps it was not even his! Perhaps the shameless surfacer harlot betrayed him. I always hated her. Still I had my moment of weakness when I saw my brother's features in the infant. I slew my brother's concubine to try to win the Spider Queen's favour once more—and still the goddess refused me. Valas forgave me. I ran. Her servants have long memories."

"You're well into your seventh century; and they're immortal, aren't they?" Xzar said. "Think of the mathematics of it."

"You mean if I am lucky I am an old decrepit woman who will die before they trouble to return from the Demonweb Pits for me," Viconia snapped back. "Well, I am _not_ old or decrepit. We are eternally young compared to you surfacers. Besides, we will more likely die in some pathetic battle from your incapability."

"When're we planned to make it out of here?" Montaron said, and she glanced down at him.

"Yes," she said. "We will. We slew three Handmaidens of a rival deity; that must have been Shar's interest. We are leaving the city gates the instant we are rested enough to stay alive."

"—Seconded, mistress," Montaron said. She smiled without animation. "Those were slaves of House DeVir in the markets this day," Viconia said. "Two of my nephews. One of my aunts. A cousin's son. They were weak, they were reduced to uselessness, they must have been brought here to be a sacrifice to the Spider Queen. I would...free them if I could, though they likely enough still pray to the Spider Queen and would be too weak to keep up with us." She laid a hand over coin Adalon'd transmuted to drowish gold; wouldn't be enough there to make a legitimate purchase of slaves even if they were stupid enough to front up to the open markets.

"Did you see the aboleth?" Xzar said, spreading his arms wide. "Aboleth! It was big, and it was wide. It was in the tank. They're neither dead nor alive. They're ancient and from the bottom of the ocean. There's supposed to be a vast metarhinal cortex in the brain dissection where all the memories of the world are stored...but I don't think I have a big enough scalpel. No, really, it's the complete truth! A secret aboleth hiding in a tank in those market. Tank's shielded from most that I or you could do with it, of course. They have impressive magic, and ought to, for the setting."

"To survive a drow city," Viconia said harshly. Montaron thought back to the markets; tank, cages, high towers, slanting rooftops.

"Some invisibility potions and a few good crossbow bolts and I've that in hand," he said. "Viconia, what's the shelling-cover of the buildings? Even up in the surface world a few mage-towers have spells built in to stop climbers getting ideas." He called her by name.

She gave a nod. "There ought to be bolts which can cause explosion for the buying. Are you talented enough to hit the locks of the cages of the DeVir slaves, and then a guard or two? If they are strong they will then seize weapons and try to escape on their own, or at least to seek a death in battle."

"And the aboleth tank—if Xzar's not talking to the voices in his head again—might look protected, but it's on a hollow dais. Easy to roll it off and set it into the crowd if ye turn that to the target," Montaron said.

"And the gate guards will overhear the riot and perhaps be summoned to aid; and then I and the mage will leave in the confusion. You must hurry to join us. Yes," Viconia said, "kill while we leave."

"That's the best idea you've had in a while, Monty. It promises such glorious chaos." The mad wizard smiled, and it shouldn't have made him feel better about things at all.

"One can never return home, they say," Viconia said. "Or at least, not without wanting to cause the earth to swallow it up and have the inhabitants basted over a slow fire."

—

Shame about the funds they were out, but ye traded gold for life when pinch came to it. Montaron edged along the slope of a rooftop and set the crossbow ready. The drow slaves still in the cage; the potion holding. Think of it as if ye'd one chance of it, for it didn't take too many brains to spot a bolt back from its angle. First shot had to count for the most, but he set it up with the lock of the drow cage anyway. Meant to be unpickable—especially from insideways—but the bolt was set up with enough sulphur-potion to smash metal four times that size. He stretched his hands one last time, licked his forefinger for luck, and squinted close for a clear view.

Then he released it, and without even looking to see where it went got his second up and loaded. The aboleth's creaking dais was a larger target, and the moment after the explosion the tank started its long pancake-flattening roll down through the screaming. There were guards starting to pinpoint him, looking upward; he risked a third bolt to get down one of the slavers. A male drow got out of the cage to the body, snatched up its swords, and started fighting his way through. Like woman, like family. He'd managed to start a fire in the old wood of the aboleth's dais and it'd started to spread; and inside the tank something was flopping in the murky depths. Folk had started to scream.

Swallow another invisibility potion and get down in a hurry—not by the simplest way 'case they thought ahead, across to the next roof where some meat was stored. He broke through a skylight and ran through corpses dangling from the ceiling, rothe-cow things dripping blood. He'd carry pursuit by stink alone if they got that far, but it was easy enough to fling himself out on the first floor and down a flight of steps. He'd wiped his boots for not tracking bloody footprints.

The screams started, and he felt enough of a blinding headache not to go anywhere near there. The fish-creature in the tank did something to folk's minds, and he would have sworn that for a moment in those murky depths a googly white eye turned to him and him alone. He saw Solaufein from before and a female warrior by the mage-drow's heels, both of them running and chasing; and took the opposite way. A few more things in the market caught on fire behind him.

Viconia had already killed the one remaining gate-guard and she and Xzar stepped out running. Across the bridge they could've been shot down easy from behind, but the mage waved a hand over a scrap of some hide and a row of hobgoblins were summoned up to block their escape. They fled back through the caverns, to the svirfneblin village for lack of anything better, tell that silver dragon to go screw herself on Manshoon's spiked tower of Zhentil Keep...

Feet pounded behind them; Solaufein and the drow woman with him were gaining. Sounded that it were only the two of them. They made it through a long warren of Underdark cavern.

"Stand and fight," Viconia said, panting; he drew his crossbow again to watch for where they crossed that boulder. Still one fancy-bolt left. Xzar raised his hands to cast a spell. When a flicker of movement came into his vision Montaron loosed the bolt right off, but it wasn't the face of a drow who didn't know his own business that it exploded in.

Squidfolk came down and surrounded them. He'd fought them before and the'd bled then. Montaron drew his blades and went for the one closest to the other two, and Viconia called down that same strike of dark fire she'd done to the demons. The mad mage chanted a spell. The squid tentacles lashed out like whips and he saw himself make at least one of them bleed. It'd been easier with the mage-drow chanting to hold them in place, he thought, and fixed a blade into where something like eyes were supposed to be. Six of them moved in. Something scraped his head, and his mind exploded in a sea of pale blue sparks. He felt himself hit the dirt and then it all went to nothing.

—


	19. Gladiator Pits

A small stone room. The drow chanting a healing spell over his skull. His hands still black as charcoal, the mad mage looking like drow the same. Weapons and armour and coinpouches gone. Cramped by them in the cell were Solaufein the drow and that female fighter.

"We have been captured and enslaved by devourers," Viconia said. "Do you still have all the pieces of your mind, slave?"

"Think I do." He rubbed his head and glared at the fool pair of drow sitting across. Mebbe they'd been the ones to pull the squidfolk after them, it was his stunt with that piece Phaere.

"You were the ones who killed the yochlol in the Female Fighter Society, weren't you?" Solaufein's female said.

No point to denying it. "Yeah," Montaron said. "And that much shows we could do worse to ye bare-handed—"

"Thank you, fellow heretics," the male drow said, "for we believe they were sent for us. There is no use to hide it now: Qilue and I serve Eilistraee."

"The naked one?" Montaron blurted out, for she was most famous for heated tales of drow women prancing skyclad under the moon.

"And _that_ is one of the reasons why I did not turn to her," Viconia said under her breath.

"The drow goddess who chose exile with us despite being absolved of all crimes against the Seldarine; the Lady of the Dance who preaches kindness, song, skilled swordwork—and the freedom of the body," Solaufein said. "What strange things have you heard of her, brother? Qilue and I served a place in coordinating her worship within Ust Natha, and then we were ordered to pursue you. We had thought of fleeing the city ourselves but not like this." He glanced up and down at the solid-seeming walls of the cell. "We intended to aid the silver dragon and prevent Ardulace and Phaere from sacrificing her eggs. Perhaps Veldrin will still be clever enough to find the false eggs within my quarters and deceive the Matron. If the red-robed wizardess does not try to gain power or spell components..." Solaufein sighed.

"And d' ye expect the lizard'll lift a claw for ye in return?" Montaron said. "Just asking."

Solaufein shook his head. "The Silver Lady's concern is her eggs held for ransom and even she would likely be unable to breach the psionic protections of these devourers. For surely if she could she would have already destroyed these creatures, though I know her only through an imp intermediary."

"Lucky bastard," Montaron muttered.

"Whom do you serve?" the drow called Qilue asked straight out, fixing them with light purple eyes that would've seemed watery if the way she held her head hadn't been so close to Mazzy Fentan.

"I will not deny it. My lady Shar," Viconia said, sketching a dark circle in the air and defying the other drow to object. They didn't.

"That's a surface deity, isn't she?" Solaufein said. "We are here together and there is no barrier to our alliance to lay plans to escape these devourers, friends. At least I no longer must put effort to feigning what I am in drow society any longer." He smiled a touch weakly—as if, of course, the fool really did think he was do'Urden striving for peace and love and all that crap.

"And I will fight as hard as I can," Qilue said. "The aberrant devourers will not take me by surprise a second time."

Montaron stepped up and tested the door, legs still limp. They'd managed to seize even his best-hidden lockpicks from him, left him in breeches and undershirt without even a belt to pick apart. Thick walls, and a low buzzing that didn't change when he moved his head; that meant it was spelled, echoing straight to their heads. The cell fastened and had hinges on the outside of it—ye'd be surprised how many prisons made the mistake of the opposite way—and there wasn't a way to get at the flange-tongue holding it. Floor-stones were metallic and he suspected inspecting them would do no more good than the dark seamless joinings of the ceiling.

"Yes, they're buzzing in our heads, Mont—Maungrin," the mad wizard said, holding his knuckles pressed to his mouth and chewing on them. "A—constant state of psionic blanking that wears the victims down like water torture, discourages thoughts of escape or harm against the captors, and disrupts the concentration for most arcane or priestly magic. Healing you worked; blasting open the cell door would... It might start to hurt to think of it." The mad mage stared vacantly around and kept biting at himself.

"He sums it up well enough," Solaufein said. "I cannot use my magics, still less sans my book; they have confiscated Qilue's sword and mine; —and I wonder, for what purpose do they hold us? To resell as slaves; to sacrifice to whatever strange deity they worship; to use for pleasure?"

"You, Solaufein, perhaps, or Veldriss; but those two males are hardly pleasure slaves," Qilue said, staring with the same lack of shame as any other drow female.

"Or to use us for our minds," the mad wizard said, breaking off his fidgeting once again. "They're mindflayers. They take a mind and flay it. Don't you know what a back looks like with lots of strips of skin hanging open over it?"

"I've inflicted it," Viconia said. "And that would be called a whipping, not a flaying; flayings are worse. I have heard larger forms than us moving about this prison complex. Other slaves to the devourers, perhaps. Powerful slaves." She inclined her head to the left. "Arena combat is my guess. I hope they will allow the use of my priestess' powers in the ring, for I am no common fighter. Slave, I have said before that I thought you would be surprisingly talented as a gladiator."

—

They wheeled out carts with all their weapons on them to take out to the arena, not so much as an empty potion-bottle missing; and that more than anything else suggested things might be hopeless, for the devourers to be that confident. A giant collared ogre spoke up on how things were meant to be.

"If you kill me, more will come to defend the masters," he said, thumping his chest. "I only their creature. I serve the master brains."

Ye'd get lost in the warren of cells and be worse off than when you started, Montaron thought, and then figured it had something to do with the buzzing in their heads. Make their prisoners forget of escape before it even started. And then in the end, 'pending on what ye were facing in the arena, lose the mind even to amuse them. The mad mage and the drow mage went for their spellbooks first, then Solaufein took up his swords. Qilue favoured what would've been a one-hander for a human but a two-hander for a drow, a balanced adamant thing with a wicked tip. Montaron gathered up his crossbow and thought of sinking its bolts into whatever spectators gathered to watch. He took note of the route they followed, second turn left and third right, the same metallic stones at the bottom patterned in freak designs he'd not seen before. Other cells were set up and other poor bastards banged inside them. Or not. He'd no sympathy to spare for what might try to kill them the next moment.

When the space for them widened it felt like they ought to have stepped out into skies above in place of the endless underground. He wasn't able to stop himself from looking up, but only another black ceiling lined the place, glittering with harsh false purple lights. A force-bubble of a sort covered the field, plain grey sand below their boots. Indistinct shapes lay beyond it, gathered and waiting. The orc-guards pushed them forward with spears, and then the metallic shards of the arena sands started to bubble in front of them. The buzzing in their heads went down and the casters started talking. Umber hulks came rising up.

"Confusions—stay back, mages, at least one of you is mad enough already," Viconia ordered. She cast something like a protection for their heads, and he and Qilue stood out in the front lines. The beasts, maybe half-starved or tortured into going rabid, came down on them.

Squidmouths. Squidmouths behind there, watching them for entertainment. Montaron cleaned sword blade on a dead chitin hide from standard reflex. The collared ogre guards came out again to drive them back. He drew the crossbow anyway, and aimed a bolt at the bubble-shell. It bounced off as easy as a scrap of paper. Get Xzar to do a grease spell on it or spray umber guts all over it, block their sight for petty revenge— An ogre spear clubbed him on the side of the head, but the creature was laughing.

Umber hulks first. Then a bunch of ankhegs, then minotaurs. Then they massacred a small group of svirfneblin, captured from that village. Next was more challenging, a pair of Calishite djinn who flung fireballs and ice and had the nasty habit of melting to nothing when ye got close. Had to draw them out into an attack and then stab them so that it'd last. Couldn't tell how long they'd been there, no light and with moments in the cell where against their will they'd all pass out for hours after a fight. Their clothes had started to stink enough that even he could notice it. Didn't even seem to be regular times set apart for meals and cell-cleanings, unless that was a squidmouth trick to make ye think it wasn't.

Gladiators in Zhentil Keep got wine and women, or at least 'till they died. Made sense to stand up in the cell and take fake swings at the Eilistraeeans' faces for the sake of moving in the arena fighting fit; made sense to watch the mad mage silently shaking in the corner and disappearing into his craziness. They'd fought an eye tyrant, a healthy one not like that blind thing, and beaten it by being fast enough with blades while the casters laid on spells from behind. Shar still listened to Viconia's prayers in the times when the bubble set them free of the humming in their heads. The blood smelled thick on the sands and the creatures died in pain.

"We could subvert them somehow," Solaufein said. "We know their cravings for emotion and excitement. That is why they force us to kill." The drow-mage looked down his long nose in the cell.

"I hope you're not going to suggest an orgy, Solaufein," Qilue said. "There's none of you that I would much wish to bed."

"And I would not bed you against your will, nor any of the other three against mine. I do not believe the five of us would be friends had we met elsewhere," Solaufein said, looking down like he thought he was a damn paladin in place of the drow he was. "You kill too easily."

"Sure. We're not inclined to take our kit off and go flapping it all in the moonlight either," Montaron said. It'd been the deep gnomes or them, and the two squeamish drow had joined in the end.

"You're very un-drowlike," Solaufein said. "Very odd...but never—"

"Monty's really a halfling," the mad mage said all of a sudden from his corner, making it too late to shut him up by hitting him. "I'm really a human, but Viconia DeVir's really an exiled drow from Menzoberranzan. Lady Adalon enchanted us as mercenaries. Benrulon—Veldrin—Benrulon is really a half-human son of Bhaal, the ironically dead surface god of murder. Most likely he'll find the cold empty mage and manage to have his revenge on him sooner or later. The demon mirror would have shown that much." Two lines of blood dripped down his chin from either side of his mouth while he talked, as if he'd managed to bite his own tongue again.

"That clears it all up considerably," Qilue said coldly. "The disgraced House of DeVir! Very well, then. I had wondered if you males were Viconia's surface-born sons, I admit, which would have explained some of your conduct."

"—No. No, we ain't related at all." Montaron shuddered; Viconia looked enraged.

"If emotion be the key of our captivity then there are ones above the fight," Solaufein Bloody Do'Urden said. "Qilue's and my love for Lady Silverhair; for the night skies bedecked with silver we have never seen. But wait," he said, "because you are surfacers you must have spent your lives gazing upon the pale moon's face and the distant crowning loveliness of the stars—"

"Go stand in a puddle in the middle of some black clouds pissing down all night and then go tell what ye think of the wonderment of the silver spheres and all that crap," Montaron said.

"The moon is abomination by the tenets of my faith," Viconia said.

"As you will," Qilue said. "I came to Eilistraee over long decades. The first of her name I heard was on the lips of a drow peasant female I slew for a priestess. I thought it only the babbling of the weak. I am drow, and drow female at that; I have done enough to earn that name. I know how to kill swiftly. I began to learn other ways. A priestess of that faith found me wounded in deep tunnels, and healed me though she feared I would slay her. I have Solaufein for a friendship upon other than ambition, and I have faith in Eilistraee's light above. Even if it is a lie I would rather serve a noble lie than ugly truths. _That_ is stronger than murdering small gnomes for the chance to live another day."

"But ye still did," Montaron reminded her.

"And I am a stronger warrior than you, surfacer," she said. "What gives you the reason to escape above fighting false battles?"

It was the mad mage who answered that one first, his mouth still bleeding as if he'd turned vampire.

"Magic. I study magic. Living people always leave you, or do worse. Weave-threads and cold motion of the dead stay and need to be understood while you breathe. Everything that is and everything that might be. But," he said, "Monty and Miss DeVir are my _friends_, and I don't have many of those. You can't study if you're locked up; and I don't want them to be locked up. I need to know."

He spat something on the floor that came out in a tide of blood from his mouth, thinned as if by water. The jagged-edged square was small, silver, and very sharp.

"It's a fragment of the demon mirror they kept for us," Xzar said. "I bit a piece off; I marinated it in scleral fluid from one of the beholder's eyestalks—"

Montaron thought that exactly how the mad mage'd done that over the past few days of him not talking would be better not to know.

"See the truth. The reflection, the bubble, and were the reflection enough for what might be—say, drow mage, what are your spells to ensnare and enchant the illithid? You pulled them from their psychic plane and held them steady and shielded. Share the runes."

"They're in my head. I have studied the spellbook; I could apply them against devourers—if they dared show their face beyond their foul shield." Solaufein said. "But how could I share them, human?"

"Oh, by Bane's hairy-toothed buttocks, must I explain every single step? The illithids shake the mind like a stirred egg white, I'll admit." The mad wizard brought the inner side of his forearm up to his mouth—and ripped open a deep cut with his teeth. He spat out more blood along with skin. "Write the runes on the cell wall in blood. Classic necromancer's stratagem. Though it's very strongly overrated as ink, I'll admit."

"They are attempting to fight," Viconia said, the mages drawing dark red designs on the cell walls. "How useful for male slaves to motivate themselves to survive. They're correct. One will not lie down to be buried. One cannot lie down and allow oneself to be buried. Though, come to think of it—if it ends up you or me to live from the devourers, male...I will choose myself. You know that."

She was cold as ice and harsh as stone, and inside himself he'd do the same if the choice came down to it. She peeled layers from him with a glance, and for all she covered what she was deep down with more complications and stirring folk up in their heads as best she could, she'd claw herself out of a grave and worse to get through what was thrown at her, and let every other fool fall to the abyss if they liked. He did not look away.

"Same here," Montaron said. Slowly, awkwardly, he patted her shoulder.

—


	20. Brain Food

The sands of the arena flowed under their feet and a bunch of tall inhuman yellow-skinned folk faced them across the way. Xzar flung a fireball quick, and then two battles started at the same time.

Five of 'em, drawing swords and chanting spells to heal their burns and shield against more. Montaron started forward with Qilue for them. She fought like a drow, carrying a globe of darkness to blind their eyes; he went for kidneys in place of tendons, for Adalon's transmutation held after all this time. He stood by Qilue's back and they let the bastards try taking them.

"By Phaere!" Solaufein cried out, and hissing snakes—illusions, for one or two of the jet black creatures lapped over each other—roiled and twisted through the air and along the sands.

"The necromantic entrails see all! Be judged by all that is effluvious and rust!" Thorns of ice sparked from Xzar's hands. Sparkly, pretty, and mostly useless. One of the swordsmen came in for a lunge. It would've gone into Qilue's back, and a second one was going for him from the right. 'Twas why he didn't like having fools to look after in a fight, though at that moment Qilue managed to sink her sword into the collarbone and down, making the enemy fall and bloody the sands. Montaron held off both swords after him, his reach not enough to get in close just yet. Their silvery blades spat sparks, and that too ought to make the squidfolk sit up and take notice. He let them glance bright off his short swords.

"—The torutre of the priestesses! The whim of the Spider Queen! The moon above the world of Toril!" Solaufein howled out. Grey fog spewed from his hands and warped itself into monstrous shapes. Xzar threw down a large bone between them and the wailing shape of a banshee appeared from it, all hair and void eyes.

"For all that is cognisant and malevolent, I fight!" A black panther sped from Solaufein's hands to leap for throats.

"—Now, male, sweep behind me!" Qilue said. A crossbow bolt hit the shoulder of another of the enemy group and Viconia stepped back from the weapon's recoil. 'Twas only in stories that one bolt couldn't bring some fool hero down. The trueborn drow leapt up in the air in the fighting style best known as the one practised by idiot bards that turned all fights to last a few seconds because of getting messily killed. She drew eyes by the lightness of the jump and turned a double somersault in the air in fancy tricks, and while the enemy by her raised his sword to get her easily at the end of it, Montaron went under and got him between the ribs. Qilue landed without flaw and twirled gracefully and inefficiently to lunge forward once more.

_Three down._ Something like an acid arrow hit him painfully in the back. One of the two left standing cast spells. He stepped by one on the ground that clutched his wound and took on the caster with enough speed to distract the attention. Xzar and Solaufein fought their mage tricks for the squidmouth crowd and Viconia waited though she could have aimed another bolt.

"Moon above a foreign bank! Silver inlaid patins in skies above fair trees!" Solaufein spread out a forest of black thorns wide across the sands that strangled the banshee in their claws.

"Worms eat you! Taste xyster injustice!" A lot of scraping-knives came from thin air and flung themselves at the drow mage, who sidestepped some in acrobatics as bad as Qilue's and fought the others with blade. "They're bone-scrapers, by the way."

The yellow-skinned caster wasn't bad in her way. Montaron had swept his blades wide on purpose, like some fool showoff assassin, but she tired. She might've wept for her companions; she tried to be brave but any squidmouth would see that it was a false fight. He brought her down to the grey sands, and behind him Qilue finished her own last one.

Squidmouths weren't interrupting them yet. He and Qilue turned on each other, and of all things the drow seemed to like the play-fighting. Strong and she knew all the dirty tricks, concealed dagger picked up from one of the dead and shoved into her bracers, kicking sand in his face. Moved with twirls and jumps and tricks that any circus wirewalker would've paid in gold to learn. Solaufein panted as if his magery was starting to run out; he made golden creatures out of illusions that looked like kid's drawings of lions. Montaron stepped back and the duel with Qilue drew closer to the mad mage. Viconia chanted something he recognised as the casting for strength and speed.

The spell-throwing had been getting closer to the edges of the squidmouth bubble, and then Montaron felt the mad mage's new casting prickle into his skin as if he was trying to pull the drow skin off by flaying. The dragon's illusion was powerful—and made the thought of taking her out for revenge shiver the base of his spine, but that wouldn't help them now. Then his drow's shape went away from his body and stayed on his skin all the same, and Qilue came in low with a slash to his feet. He jumped up instead of starting back, too flashy, and went in to beat her reach and stab to her guts.

The transmuted images of him and the mad mage rose up like giants. He saw himself inside the squidmouths' bubble itself, fighting, and the long shades of him and Xzar reached out as if they'd already broken through it. They could see all of him five times the size, and not in his own shape he couldn't care less.

it was an accident and he'd say so afterward if anyone asked. Qilue came down from one of her fancy tricks and set foot on a fallen helmet, and when she fell she landed on his blade. Solaufein screamed out for her and then had the sense to weave it into a mourning chant that rang out like he was casting one of Eilistraee's spells. The warrior-drow was still good enough to get out of the way and held her guts together with her left hand to fight with her right. Blood soaked wet through her dark armour and she stood her ground but did no more.

Xzar started the mage-drow's casting against squidmouth powers and they must have reckoned that the twenty-foot shape of him had already broken through the shield. Montaron distantly saw a big squidmouth stand up in the seats and move, and it fought back. And its mindblast was good enough to send shatters through the shield; and then the arena audience saw good enough cause to join in.

"_For Shar above all others, lil alurl!_" Viconia screamed, her face twisted into something not far from what the mad asylum had given her. "Valas, burial, yochlol of the spider, Shar! Know my loss!"

It was a hit on the shield from the inside and the squidmouths swayed to drain it from her. There were clear holes in it now. Montaron took up the crossbow when she threw it to him. Some of the bolts were black like she'd spelled them while the duel went on, and he got the first shot well into a squidmouth's head beyond. Solaufein changed his chant into the same spell to hold their powers back and got it done in time with Xzar.

Viconia dropped to her knees above the caster out of the five and chanted a healing spell. The tall yellow-skinned woman got up, glaring out of black eyes. He'd taken care to leave her alive, her and the rest of them. They'd taken the message.

"The Gith assist," she agreed curtly, and bent to pick up one of her friends. Montaron stepped forward and did some of the real work, bolts fired into the crowd, but not all of them were held by the enspelling. The squidmouths gestured and waved tentacles around, and a net pierced through and over them, the same piercing headaches and tricks of the soaked brain that weren't so different from umber hulks. The weighted net went inside his mind, raised up and brought down like the sting of a whip, like the mad wizard chatted about flaying the grey matter. He felt a bolt release but where it went he didn't know.

"Yes," the mad wizard said. "They're strong. Stronger than me or our drow friend. But don't we Zhents admire power?"

He got out the demon mirror from his robes and held it up with the fragment joined to it, and something disappeared from them. Turn the squidmouths' power on themselves, that was it, and now _they_ were running around and tripping over each other like stumbling mice—

Solaufein flung a drow spell over them that had some of them fall straight down in a hissing cloud of gas that hurt them, and the mad mage the same. Behind them, the arena guards had come. The Gith-creatures fought them.

"I prayed to Shar for more spells to kill than to heal," Viconia said. Qilue lay on the ground leaking bits of stomach. "Her powers do not come without a fair price. I cannot heal you enough for any good."

The warrior drow sketched the full moon's symbol with a shard of blade she clutched in her hands. "Go, Solaufein. You need all the fit assistance you can. Leave me—with my sword in my hand." She sat up, still clutching it, trying to staunch the wound. In more time than they had the other drow got up to say that he'd agreed to abandon her.

The ogre collars still worked fine to make them stop the prisoners. Wasn't an easy fight; but they got through and bludgeoned themselves to the slave complex. The buzzing started again in their heads, like twenty gnomes with hammers pounding on their skulls. Montaron looked back but the squidmouths there were still down.

"There will be an Elder Brain," said the Gith woman. "Find it and destroy it, primelings. It will seem like a vast amount of brain tissue in a large vat, the source of the psychic trauma. Most illithid encampments are governed by a detached psionic intelligence of great volume."

"Right. Could we get a reason for following your orders, lady?" Pointy ears like an elf but serrated; pale yellow skin that looked—and was—about as tough as light leather; humanlike features but too tall and gaunt to have much human blood. Gith, they called themselves, whether that was the name of this bunch in particular or their type as a whole. No way he'd trust them just for showing up and getting beaten.

"Githyanki are eternal enemies of the devourer, slave; they come from the planes; they have psionic power in their own right," Viconia said. "I declare an alliance."

The Gith woman made a formal gesture with her hands. "Without the destruction of the Elder Brain the doors that hold this subplane will most likely remain sealed. Go quickly." More guards flowed in, led by a pair of squidfolk.

The stone corridors turned over and over, floors and ceilings marked in foreign runes. The Elder Brain hadn't stopped the pummelling; the worst of hangovers was nothing to this. But he'd suffer through this for days and wade over twice the bodies if he had to. Anything was worth escape. Montaron stabbed into a squid on the ground and turned its head into a rain of red. They'd broken off from Solaufein and the Gith when a bunch of squidfolk had come through a hidden door and split them up and down. The fighting continued down both paths, in all the narrow corridors where only a few flayers could get through at a time.

"Shar, protect us," Viconia said, and once more the force of some finger-wiggled shield set around them. It helped, a little. Beside them walked a red-eyed skeleton with bones drawn from two ogres and a fallen mindflayer. It swung an ogre sword as big as those the crazy Rashemen beserker'd liked, limbs thick and strong and deathly white. The tentacles did little harm to it, and Viconia gloated happily about its power. "She gives me gifts."

Her hands gestured at a mindflayer the skeleton warrior fought; and as if she'd sucked the air from its lungs it clutched at its throat and fell. So did the two behind it. They moved on.

The skeleton paused and stopped at a way it couldn't pass. "I'll get it open soon enough," Montaron snarled. The door was fancy-patterned and sealed too tight for the undead to force it; always so bloody predictable that the elaborate entryways held the thronerooms and the like, trying to impress the commoners, squidfolk or surfacer alike. There was no lock he could spot but the hinges were on the outside this time, and so he laid a hand ready to unloose them.

It sped through his brain in black and the next thing he knew was lying on the floor far away from it.

"For Shar's sake rise and fight," Viconia said. He sat up and felt whether his skull was cracked. The mad wizard bent back from the door.

"Don't touch it, Monty," he said, "it's locked with psychic force. Only the mind of an illithid is meant to slide their tentacles into the engravings upon it and release their brainpower to step neatly through. Would my brain be complicated enough? I could transform my mind into something like the illithid's permanent brain-eating obsession and nasty overcomplicated plotting mental state and waggle my tentacles—I mean, my arms—"

"Ye ain't turning yourself into a flayer. Or I'll kill you," Montaron said. He could tell already the mad mage'd start sucking brains himself.

"All right, Monty. The second idea is to use a flayer ourselves!"

Montaron gestured to the dead squids lying about on the floor that he'd done himself.

"No, the brains need to be very fresh for me to preserve them. Brain tissue decays so quickly, although it's still very good on toast. Fetch me a nice new helping of mindflayer head?" Xzar clasped his hands together by his head like some village girl asking for hair-ribbon.

Not like there weren't plenty around. In the next room a couple of squid guarded what looked like coffins that Montaron didn't try opening up. Kill 'em all; he jumped in before Viconia's undead this time, and a few moments after smelt fresh blood and tentacle burns on his shoulders he hadn't felt in the fight. He hauled the most intact body quickly back to the mad mage and let Viconia try what she could in the way of healing.

The zombie mindflayer slipped its tentacles to the door and something started to happen.

"—Hide us," Montaron said; the sanctuary pattern should give them an extra moment or two. Viconia chanted for Shar, and he slipped through the shadows cast by the warped passage. The zombie squid marched ahead and fixed open another door, clustered by a faint blue glow that held it vacant and preserved like dead googly-eyed fish in an icebox.

Then they crossed into a room where veins ran from floor to ceiling and pumped blood into a beating floor of curled grey tissue shot through with red, moving like a tide of flesh. Over it three tall squidfolk stood up to guard. Behind them were creatures made from that same white lumpen stuff wound over itself many times, and in the centre stood a giant metal vat nailed and welded together. It stunk of disinfectant, blood, and the metallic smell that lingered after a mage ran lightning bolts through copper rods to bring up some corpse jerking to life.

Montaron's headache multiplied itself threefold. This was the Elder Brain. It had found them. It knew they were here. The grey creatures were golems of that same brain matter, and for all he would've liked to laugh at the squidfolk for using the soft stuff that made the reason why smashing in the skull killed easy, the golems moved like they were much tougher and heavier than they looked. Flesh golems ye poisoned with nightshade or castor-distil, stop their muscles and end their shapes; but he'd not those particular samples here.

They knew they were here and they might as well step out of the shadows already and present themselves for eating—

And that was a fool mind-trick, and he was staying where he was. The guards of the Elder Brain tore through the zombie squid without wasting a moment thinking about whether it was one of them or not, and a fist from one of the golems took down the skeleton. Then the illithid guards started roaming their tentacles about the room. They searched. He got under them, the Sharran's arm held in the crook of his elbow, and tried not to think about what they were doing. He got another hand on the lip of another small vial the squidfolk had left them. At the last don't let them take them, whatever they did.

Then the mad wizard came visible, a tentacle wrapped around his neck and tightening. He grabbed it with his left hand, lowered his mouth down onto it—

"Kozakuran cuisine's not unlike!"

Probably catch some horrible disease from it. Then the mad mage stepped up into the air.

"Drow levitation. The fool shows off," Viconia whispered disapprovingly, and didn't do the same herself.

"Hello, Elder Brain!"

The mad wizard even added a cheery little wave.

"Do you _want_ my brain to add to that churning mass of neural connections? Can you reach me— Oh, yes. I hear you talking to me. Much louder than the usual dead people," the mad mage said. He tapped his head. "What about a game, brain-in-an-unusually-large jar? Mind against mind. Madness against your dreadful assimilating tide of utter sanity. That's it. Devour my mind if you can."

He pulled himself up and sat cross-legged in the air to dodge a squidmouth's grab; he must've been able to see down into that tank that bubbled and seethed. He distracted.

"Yes, you could suck it out of my nostrils and eat the grey matter with tentacles, but that's not the point. I feel you, you feel me, and your ultimate goal besides the bread-and-circus approach with us being mostly the circuses so far is to expand this little plane and take out the drow city through the portal and build the seeds of an empire of mind-slaves—

"Or, yes, I could've just thought that myself. I don't have to be reading your mind just because you're in mine. I see the grey mazes and the twists of the planes in eight dimensions all at once. I see the seed of the slug in the pools and the whisper under the saltwaters and the electric echoes speeding in the cells of the lobes. Your density of cranial tissue processes nineteen possible reflections in a second. Can you follow me all the way through my madness?"

"And so his insanity finally serves a purpose. I scarcely credit it," Viconia whispered weakly. The mad wizard grabbed attention; and it was time for them to do the real work. Montaron took her along the edge of the room, back behind the gathering guarding the front.

"How else could a contest of mind be settled but riddles! Mad riddles!" The mad wizard snapped his fingers, a small bolt of lightning dancing from hand to hand. His hair stood itself up. "Once the flames of her passion met the coolness of his touch; the long night fell and mourning came to blame their fervid clutch. Restored they were reborn apart and oathed to no more meet; and now their passings reflect in him how bright she shines to greet... Oh, you do know that one! What do I hear from you—

"Twice four and twenty blackbirds, were standing in my brain; I ate their minds and left a fourth, how many do remain? —None, of course, because the rest all flew into the sky, into clouds that are not clouds; the sky is unexplored and above there are things with teeth just as there are below, bubbles and grey shards that swallow birds who disappear, just as madness swallows you in its gold-green skies—"

Shapes in a tightening circle floated in the air by the mad wizard, roiling dark green smoke he pulled into shapes worse than the mage-visions of the skindancers. Blackbirds spread their wings and flew, and things barely possible to see ate first their claws and eyes. Xzar chanted another riddle.

He'd reached the back of the vat itself. Montaron reached out and thanked Mask he felt only cool metal, whether the spell of the drow holding or the squidmouths' own foolishness not important. Metal's weak points was always where it joined. He tested the iron bolts one by one.

"Glittering points that downward thrust, sparkling spears that never rust, the whole as a dagger in flesh will die, but then my clear tears may never dry." Xzar shook back his robes, his voice high and quick. "Very well! Ambrosia lives on our lips and mouths, build a six-walled gold house that is never to rust, lift now by the wind that tosses heads south, a sabre of death that pricks some to dust. Answer that if you dare—if you dare cross the labyrinth—"

There was one slightly looser than the others. He pried at it with a lockpick, screwing it out piece by piece. Couldn't afford to be overheard. Lightning bolts lanced and crackled through the air from Xzar's mad cackling. The riddle-chanting went on around them. He gestured to Viconia when he'd got it partway out, and she started chanting under her breath. Then he felt the right kind of strength enter into him. He ripped it out and a stream of red-grey fluid trickled out, laden with tiny tadpole-like things that swarmed and writhed, and he took the next step of parting the metal itself. It wasn't subtle, and it got the golems and guards turning on them. It didn't need to be too subtle.

In the vat the Elder Brain was a pulsing mass in two joined halves, grey worms in red fluid joined over and into each other like wet noodles. A brain large as a giant, living and wriggling like a conjoined slug. The red fluid washed over him and the drow like a lake while it drained from the vat. Montaron started stabbing.

"—Treachery!" the mad mage screamed. "Oh, vile treachery, lost in madness—what cannot be controlled or brought to bear! We're all mad here, the pinafored girl said to the disappearing cat's grin; madness to see all and know all; madness impossible and unconfined and never for you to find. It—hurts—"

Montaron sliced a first hole into the brainflesh, and took up the vial to dump its few black drops in deep. He'd scraped yochlol's demon poison up from the floorboards in Ust Natha and it soaked into the tissues. Viconia defended him behind, the golems and the squidmouths coming after them in penalty for it. The mad wizard fell to the ground in a dull thump into the fleshy base of the room, though Montaron didn't have time to look back. He hacked piece by piece in it—where the vitals in a brain? Where did the bloody thing keep its head? Bits of grey flesh looked like they were flashing and the thoughts changing. Parts convulsed black by the poison. The mad wizard kept on screaming, as if he was showing them how much it hurt. The scream was in their heads as well, but Montaron had always liked killing. He thrust his body into the vat with warm flesh swallowing him whole, like a willing woman except where it wasn't— He drove swords deep into the brain tissue and let it fall to slug pieces around him. The screams while it died made it easier to kill.

Ye wanted the bloody noise to stop. Grey matter fell in slashed pieces around him. Xzar's voice stopped the screaming and there were sounds of other things falling. He didn't stop hacking until the drow called for him.

"Support _me_, sakphul! The golems have fallen, it is dead—fight for me!"

She'd already taken care of one of the squidfolk. Underfoot the floor had stopped pulsing and flowing. He felt burns on his face and something confusing his head, but after the fight was done the squids were dead like the brain tissue. Viconia lowered her hands from a casting. The mad wizard stood up and wiped blood from his forehead.

"I want some of that, Monty! Just a vial...or three..." He threw himself into the Elder Brain's remains. They dragged him out and started running for it, for chances were high more squidfolk'd want revenge on their master.

Mask bless 'em, they came on an opened way that showed the Underdark on the other side of it. It could have been the surface but he'd be relieved enough to get back even to that place. Not far from it were a line of squidfolk fighting a bunch of human-looking captives trying to get to the same place; Solaufein and Qilue fought the same, the warrior with a rough bandage on her waist and slowed movements. The mad mage lifted his hands and called for a blast of lightning, and then nothing happened. He spread his empty hands. Montaron felt himself tire as the drow's spell of strength stopped, and she glared at the battles.

"Could you take on a score of devourers, sakphul?" Viconia said sharply. Montaron saw one of the humans dying quickly; the tentacles found their way into the nose, and twined out the grey stuff like a string and ate it like candyfloss. One or two of the gith yellow-skinned ones fought in the melee. So far the squidfolk hadn't turned back and the three of them could stand and watch. Qilue swung her blade at a mindflayer's head, and fell short when its staff went into her wound. Then it grabbed her arms by both its hands and pulled her close. The drow warrior slammed a foot into where the groin should've been, but the squid didn't move or care. Solaufein called out to their goddess. Qilue screamed, louder, and another human went down from an umber hulk fighting alongside the mindflayers.

The last gathering of the mindflayer army right there, bad cess to them.

"We don't bleed and die for them," Montaron said, and turned and went into the portal. One step forward and they stood on plain solid rock looking back at the battle in the illithid place.

"Closed," Viconia said sharply, "or they will prey on Ust Natha. Not that that should be any loss; but the devourers would have to be fought again."

Qilue had collapsed slack-bodied in the illithid's arms, grey and red leaking from her nose; Solaufein tried to fight like a tanar'ri to get to her. In the distance they still saw him slicing mindflayer heads and shouting something too incoherent to hear. The portal was rimmed by a gem set in the top. They worked to take that to fragments, and the mad mage gestured to help close the thing and leave the illithid plane to the winners. Save the innocent folk in the Underdark from mind slavery. Mebbe the good and noble goddess Eilistraee'd even thank them for it one day. Montaron smiled without humour. Bare rock stood before them and no sign of flayer tentacles or upset noble-naked drow took chase.

—

Note: Riddle answers supplied on request.


	21. Conquerors

_Warning_: Contains Viconia and Xzar sleeping together.

—

The casters stumbled like drunkards in the dark; they weren't faking it.

"Enough spells for today, Mummy. I need to go to sleep. Please let me go to sleep." The mad mage bit on his thumb.

"I need a bath," Viconia complained, wringing her cloak of brain's fluid. "So do you. So do you, mage. I tire. I start to stumble." She clutched at the mad wizard's arm, which didn't help her.

"Svirfneblin village, fools," Montaron grunted. "Anything in the dark—ye said as much—ain't safe—"

The pair of fools fell against each other, collapsing in a dark corner between narrow stone. Viconia waved a hand vaguely in the air.

"Shar give us...Shar give us shield for the night..." She closed her fingers and let her hand flop down like a dead fish.

It half looked like seamless rock covered where they lay. Montaron stared down at the two of them. In the time he'd glanced away to check the illusion they'd already closed eyes and lay on top of each other, cloaks tangled together and breathing lightly as if they slept like children. He drew the swords and sat cross-legged to keep watch for a long night.

—

"You're fortunate I pointed the way to water, males." Viconia wrung out her long hair. "Are you finished washing my garments, sakphul? I realise it was cold, but I could not tolerate your stench a moment longer without strangling myself."

Felt slightly better without the brain fluid drying and pulling down his clothes. He passed back her cloak and dress, taking the drow clothes on the black shape he still hadn't lost. The mad mage stared at his own reflection in the pale underground river, tracing where his markings ought to be and sneezing every so often from the cold.

"We've got to get rid of this, Monty," he whined. "We're not really drow."

Yeah, ye wanted your own body and the skills with it and the way ye'd shaped it on your own—and the way to the bloody silver lizard. He wondered if Benrulon'd done what he wanted in the drow city by now. He wouldn't be surprised if they'd been gone months under the squidmouths. Times had buzzed in their head; and they were almost free. The mad mage washed over the demon mirror carefully and belted his robe.

"Ye've one chance, mad mage," Montaron said. "Screw it up and I'll stab ye first."

"We should," Viconia purred, her dress still only halfway on. He could almost taste what they could do.

—

Adalon's lair was, he'd guess, thirty feet high and closed, for her duty was to guard the Underdark; and at least a hundred and fifty deep. Holypated knightlings might wear out their left hands patting their own backs for facing dragons in their lairs, but the truth was that if ye wanted to fight a dragon it was better to do it in a place with a roof. 'Course, the lair was also the home, and with mage-casting dragons ye never knew what surprises lay ahead.

He'd fought a formerly-sleeping wyvern or few with the idiot mage. Not half the size of the silver thing; and their hoards of dead carcasses weren't anything like dragons either.

_Step up the game; and take from the bastards all we can._

"I am aware you defeated the yochlol," Adalon said, lowering that vast silvery head and staring with her big white eyes. "The Bhaalchild achieved the rest, and told me that he did not travel with you."

Suspicion, most likely, crept into her eyes. He wouldn't know if she used some subtler form of mind-magic than the squids.

"But he told ye he'd met us. Nothing much personal 'twixt us." Mayhap if he'd known of the asylum; but that was only if skinmask-mage and bloodsucker had told him, and they weren't the type to say much.

"My eggs were returned. The handmaids of the Spider Queen were denied." The white teeth smiled. "You have a demonic artefact you took from them. Return it to me. I will see it does no harm."

"I would rather not do that, lady Adalon. And after I broke it and ate it and mended it and gave to it too," Xzar said. "And after I know a recipe for..."

"Do not think I do not see what lurks in you!" Adalon said. "I gave you tolerance for your deed and it lasts no further. _Go_," she finished, and cold breath spilt from her mouth.

Silver dragons fight with ice born from their gullets. They've breath that can stop you moving. They've extra talons on the tips of their wings. Thick scales. Resistant to castings, their own and others'. Four sets of claws and one set of teeth and one long tail. Soft eyes and tongue, and softer scales in carefully hidden places over the lower belly. This one knew spells herself.

The mad mage's contingency hit. A flock of cheap skeletons turned up from old bones. They all got faster. A blast ripped through the dragon to make finger-wiggling show on her and a second blast was timed to take down the spell protections. And the mad wizard's eyes whitened with magesight. Viconia's casting felt hot and spike-edged and added cheap shieldings. They scattered.

Adalon's huge feet beat down in the cavern. Her wings flew like giant razors through the air and her teeth met close to Montaron's head. Get a clear shot to the eye with poison-marked crossbow, he'd thought, but the feet came close to him and he tried to slash into the scales. It barely took. Xzar got another spell off while skeletons were crushed below the dragon's bulk. Something on the silver scales blurred out. Montaron stabbed between the scales on the talons and made nothing more than a pinprick to it. Adalon's long head snapped after him, but the speed held. He ran past the white tiles of her lair, trying to get her to tangle herself. The tail—watch for the tail—

The tail-spike sheared above his head. He flung himself aside. Out of Viconia's hands came a long black bolt of power he'd never seen her use before, and it left a scorch-mark the size of a barrel-opening on Adalon's left flank. She'd gotten far back from the dragon, but it breathed out a pyramid of cold air at her. The scream meant she was still alive when the blast ended, and he nicked at the muscle behind the dragon's foot. Hobgoblin battlecries echoed from the mad wizard's summoning. Arrows bounced off scales. He opened up some and started to make the dragon bleed; if he got far enough he'd cripple her foot. She whirled on him, white eyes terrible.

The green light of the spell he'd told the mad wizard not to use—'cept in times like this—hit the dragon's face, and gave her pain. The scar went barely deeper than Viconia's strike.

"Impossible," Adalon spoke, turning eyes to the mad mage, "brave, evil ones, foolish ones. Be still, now; for me..."

Breath that stopped limbs spilled from her mouth, near colourless but for faint white in it, covering Xzar. And the demon mirror was in his hands, filmed with the fluid of the Elder Brain. Viconia, a distance away, watched the mad mage in satisfaction; for he still moved, and the handy preparatory casting she'd done held on.

"Have a look," Xzar said, standing his ground. The tail smacked a hobgoblin, and pulped the creature's chest against a wall of the lair.

"The demonic artefact. It shows the real shape of one. There is no truth I have to fear," Adalon said. Ice rimed her mouth and built in her throat, and the wide moon eyes took a glance at the silver mirror in the mad wizard's arms.

"But are there possibilities you fear?" Xzar said; and the dragon fell into the mirror, and the wrap of the tail and the beat of the wings pulled them all spiralling into the silver void by her. It was all light, and mad-magery, and going wrong.

_...And Adalon reared with all the wrath of a trueborn dragon, and rose to the ceiling of her lair; in the earthquake stone rained, and the mad mage and Viconia took their last breath the moment before large stone covered them, and the claw cut Montaron open in an instant—_

_...And the mad mage's spell never took the dragon Adalon, and the ice breath of the dragon cracked the mirror from side by side, and the mad wizard froze the moment before he died; and then Adalon's spell took them all down to the Nine Hells—_

_...And Adalon spat out a second rain of the paralzying gas, for Viconia's spells were long since stripped, and for she was a noble silver dragon in place of a tormenting red or green, she secured the deaths of the interlopers quickly and once more took her children under her wing to sing them songs—_

_...And the fibres of the Elder Brain were lengthy and wound over and over each other, like a plaited rope stores more than a string; and in them unfolded the possibilities of the next moment, all at once in the shards of the yochlol and the shield of the tyrant and the sparks of old mind..._

"In the pages of a book, Adalon," Xzar said, "there is some possibility that leads inexorably to your death today and my dragon's blood spell components."

"_Power_," Viconia hissed, and Montaron thought of the sort of silver that came with gold.

—_The dragon roared. The dragon struck. The dragon was ice. The dragon stilled others in a breath. The dragon enspelled and earthquaked and clawed. Ten cases, fifty, dragon's victories winning through._

_—A perfect shot, high on a ledge, Adalon going after Viconia, not paying attention to the halfling who didn't look like it. The dragon's voice turned high for a cry as if it'd hurt her; the vast eye blinked and cried large tears, and the dragon roared for vengeance while the barbed tip of the bolt worked its way to the brain—_

_—The spell weakened the dragon's chest. Viconia's casting sharpened the blades. He was running under her, and it so happened that the blades bit at the right spot for silver's blood to spill. Even dragons had their share of thick blood-vessels that burst open and could not easily be staunched; and he'd opened the place for that. Spells lanced through the air to hold it open, and he hacked at the dragon's open heart—_

_—And instead of a mirror of possibility the demon mirror was a shield, and the cold from the dragon's throat was turned to spears of Lloth's black web that returned to bind her mouth and bring her down, and for the guardian's death the Queen of the Demonweb Pits set forth her drow to ravage the surface and take back their rightful place—_

"Do it," the proud silver said, raising her neck and baring it in doing so, "do it and do not delay it; and know your own—"

Silver lightning stormed over the mirror's surface.

—

The mad mage's face—or not so mad, any more—was clean, young-looking without the markings, and blank, carefully blank. Around the next corner of the cave they'd find their enemies ready. She'd changed Xzar, made him go quiet and biddable by her; he didn't babble or make a nuisance of himself any more. Xzar followed on the drow's orders, not quite the way Montaron did himself—much quieter, nothing but shuffling and spellcasting when Viconia said. She'd managed to take the mad wizard to bed and get her power over him. He'd helped her prison him, figuring that'd make the mad mage easier to keep.

She paused and brushed the tips of her fingers across the mad mage's cheek, and though there was terror in his eyes at her touch he was too much the slave by now to dare to back away. If'n they fought well there wouldn't be punishments after.

"Fire," the drow whispered, "and then drain their divine casters of power; then speed us to finish them; and summon gnolls to our side..."

Xzar nodded quickly as if there was no other choice. Then the battlecry came and the black-clad figures fell on them and tried to kill. Montaron could see himself surrounded, see the drow trying to beat her way out. The mad mage's face was pale and the spells came slowly one by one, and when the battle went ill there was too much fear on his face to do anything other than ordered. He got stabbed in the back, spears running all of them through, not fast enough and no sudden imagination to change things—

—

Anti-magic fields made up for nob mages and the like only prickled his skin as much as going out before a thunderstorm. Tattooed Xzar stood limp between two hefty soldier types and Montaron thrust up his chin to take it like a man.

The gallows was well-built for its kind. Solid wood. Thick tarred hanging-ropes. Two ready spaces on them. Grim-faced soldiers with muscles bulging like hog shanks. The sentencing'd been read out in court, all of it; and the stoneface judge'd put on a black cap after. Only a day between verdict and execution.

First the blasted wouldbe do-gooders read out the pretty parchment scroll of crimes, when the truth was folk gathered just to watch the death. He'd spit on the nearest gawking eye if he could. It wasn't a short list and the guard captain took his time on it, wearing a plumed helmet with a long red-dyed feather curling out of it like an old cock's wattle. Spittle flew out of his pox-scarred face. Nothing they'd not heard before.

"—and sentenced to death in accordance with our law. Take the prisoners."

The stairs swayed below him and Montaron stalked up with put-on bravado. The black-masked hangman with a breath that stink of onions lowered the rope to his neck and stood him dead-centre on the trapdoor. A grey-robed Ilmatari gave the nod to it; they'd turned down damned last rites. The knot lay firm at the base of his neck. The mad mage bothered to struggle at the last, biting and kicking with lunatic's strength. Gave the crowd something to jeer at. A rotten egg flew through the air for them. They beat the mad mage into place and pulled on the lever.

And watching, the same guard-captain, Viconia draped around him in the crowd, the drow cloaked and her hands running over the captain's body to save herself. She looked up at the prisoners, showing no expression in her eyes and refusing to turn away from the sight. Her new man stroked her cheek.

Montaron saw it as if from a distance, the noose and the final crack. The mad mage dangling with robes in the air, head bent an impossible angle to the left, dead eyes almost bursting from his skull. Then himself, the same bad end he'd expected all along, long drop ending with a sudden stop, body swaying to and fro in the wind like so much refuse...

—

They moved along with wealth and power and the black tower took shape in unclaimed lands. Rising glassy high like Zhentil Keep's own architecture, above settlement and town of people and merchants and farmers under the thumb of the tyrant. They settled down. Terror conquered the nearby land. The Mage-Lord Xzar ruled in his black magic and evil genius.

"Humble advisors, when the Mage-Lord cares to listen," a white-robed Viconia said. "And—unwilling concubine; at times..." Her tears were thoroughly false.

Heroes came and challenged the dark Mage-Lord in his black tower, and failed; ignoring his cowardly council behind him in the shadows...

"Wheat production has increased by half this year," Viconia said in a small velvet-walled room, studying plain scrolls on a low table between them. "The mining operation wants to open negotiations with the Shieldspar dwarves. I think we should allow the dwen'del to deal with us as if we were a legitimate kingdom; they are ready to treat."

"Get Almorgan to go to them. He's half their blood," Montaron said to her. "The Shieldspars have a little secret contact going on with Jameson's trade ring, and that's a bit of knowledge to keep in the hole."

"Later, arrange for one of their shipments to Jameson to go astray; and make sure Jameson acts accordingly to punish them," Viconia said. "We can offer near as favourable a dealing. For now, at any rate."

"The Darkhold caravans got a good deal from Sememmon," Montaron said, going through a scroll of his own. "Market for nightshade's high. Should get one more field for it, trade in the dreaming 'shrooms."

"And look at these plans for my temple's new wing," Viconia said, and threw over an architectural drawing with lots of black and purple to it. "What do you think? Majestic and glorious, is it not?"

"Oh, sure," he said, and she mock-frowned and leaned over the table above him.

—

The woman came up to him, but he wouldn't have known her in a crowd. Mostly because she was wearing Viconia's bootboy's skin.

"I take people's skin," Raissa announced, "I am Raissa Skindancer whether I wanted to deny it. I still want to deny it. But because I knew the love of Tiris I knew I could not stand by when cruel murderers acted; and I do good by using my powers to punish the wicked. I dance in people's skin to save the world.

"And you," she said, "though you helped me, have done enough evil that I cannot let it lie. By skin shredding in motion, I have come to see you gone!"

He'd taken the time in her little speech to set up a poisoned throwing dagger. It ate into her flesh though she fetched up a handy antidote from her belt. They fought and it lasted long; but in the end he'd not prepared for an enemy who knew how to take his skin. Raissa had fought a lot of evildoers over the years, weak peasant girl no longer. She saw him dead and she took over his skin; and then the mad mage's last words were a surprised cry to Monty, and Viconia taken and her skin flayed from her the same—

And Raissa Skindancer left as quiet as a thief in the night, searching out the next murderer to use their skin.

—

It was plain rock made in the vast face of an old man with little things about him that weren't human, but blasted if you could list and narrow them out. Chin a touch too long if ye turned your head to the right. Nose a bit too narrow to stare up at it. Eyes open and staring and dead like it'd been made off a death mask instead of a living thing. They stood on the right cheek of it, and beyond the face of the statue lay only the black void of space. Someone'd taken Toril itself away, was the first mad thought; and only the pain of the long silver spears pricking into them made it seem real.

"You killed magic here," Xzar said sadly. Book and components had been stripped from his robes.

"You killed _gods_ here!" Viconia snapped. "There is nothing here, nothing! Shar—"

The yellow-skinned warriors of the Gith stood around them.

"You betrayed us by abandoning us to the old masters," said one of the gith they'd left behind in the illithid gladiator pits. "You have been judged guilty by law. Remain here on the stone corpse of Destaranzai in retribution for your crime." She touched a thick necklace, and without appeal the githyanki vanished.

The gith lived on the stone remains of dead gods here in the planes. This was a small one as dead god went, falling headlong into the distant void. The air was thin. Nothing grew or lived on him. They waited, and in the void the same prisoning came to them as they'd tried to doom the gith, forever and ever...

—

It was the Mage-Lord's dark spiky tower once more, and pulling faces in her black glass reflection was a little girl.

A gaunt, patchy-skinned little girl, with bony shoulders, a nose too small for her face, and a tangle of white hair that wouldn't lie down. But the kid giggled and poked her tongue out at herself as if she were happy enough, and scrunched her face together to wriggle her pointy ears by themselves. Part-drow from her looks and on the short side.

Then he saw himself behind her, older than he'd been in the room with the scrolls, and looking to have started to put on a stomach.

_Curse ye, wide-bellied fool, have some sense and pick a fight or two!_ Montaron thought._ Ye can't expect to sneakthief or keep breath that way..._

But the other-him looked content. Satisfied and smug and happy for all his slackness. Viconia wore hair marked by a few yellowing streaks up in a bun. She called out something he couldn't quite hear and the girl rushed to her side.

It was with a sense of growing horror that he figured out the poor kid had his eyes, and not in the sense the mad mage would use the term. She was still shorter than him and the other-him took her hand like a father—

—

"This has ended, _wael_,fool," Viconia said, and the dagger she threw at him showed she meant it; and the him in the vision scowled the same back at her.

"Fine, wench. Make your living on your knees or not as ye prefer. And pray I don't throw back."

Another dagger went an inch above her shoulder.

"Come on, Monty. Zhent business awaits. We can take care of it with just us again, like old times, can't we?" the mad mage begged, and Montaron turned on him.

"What makes ye think I'll stick with you? Zhent business—there's else I can do than drag a lunatic fool like you, mad wizard—"

Separate ways it was, and that didn't go so bad; Xzar stuck himself in a lab and did a few things that the high-ups figured had their uses, and Montaron killed Harpers and fought Zhent wars; and then a Sharran temple got in ill with a Baneite high in the Keep, maybe something because the high priestess didn't feel like shagging him.

On a battlefield all black mud, Zhentilar getting up, the mad wizard bringing up skeletons to put down the cult, and the high priestess screaming as she tried to swing her flail at their heads; the poison head of it cut in him as his own blade made her bleed, and by Viconia's hand the mad wizard had fallen for once and all first...

—

And again he was back in the Mage-Lord's tower, Viconia and the daughter and sitting around trying to teach her to play stone-tower jumps. The kid laughed when she knocked down a triple-soldier by mistake, pieces scattering the board, but then she moved her roguestone in a sideways double that beat up six of his low pieces and made him proud. She clapped her hands. Her mother patted her head.

There came a knock on the door while they set up the pieces for another game, and a human woman in Shar's colours stepped up to whisper in Viconia's ear. The child lifted up a red weaponpiece to place down.

"_Kessilvyabah_," whispered the name in Viconia's ear. An old demon—demons who never forgot—and then there was an obsidian dagger in Viconia's side and a yochlol-drow standing by her, the shape shifting to Lloth's colouring—

He stood up and tried to stab the handmaid dead with his beltknife, but the next moment the thing left to the inner planes. The child tried to stop her mother's wounds while Viconia tried her chanting, all her most powerful spells to slow the spider's poison in her blood. None of it worked.

He shouted at the mad wizard in his lab to hurry up his research for a cure, but though Xzar gave himself no sleep none of it did any good. Angry drow goddesses left their claws, or perhaps ungrateful Shar had let her go in spite of all she'd done for her—Sharran creed said not to hope or ever be happy— Curse their names from dawn 'till dusk and that did nothing, only spilled blood mattered.

Viconia hung on for four days with chants from her priestesses and alchemy to delay it. Talked; spent time with her family; and the end came slowly and painfully while she whispered her last words.

Then other-him was standing, armoured, at the head of a group of adventurers, and the child left behind with the mad mage. And deep in the Underdark he travelled despite the girl left behind, and Montaron saw himself burying steel in a drow's stomach at the last in vengeance...

—

It was hot and dry in desert lands to the south, yellow sands below their feet and silence falling across the valley. He felt certain this wasn't the same as the last. A dark shape ran through the sunlight, and magery fell on them and confused them. A summoned demon screamed. Blood fell and drenched the sands, and then armoured feet marched by.

"Hello, betrayers," said a youth's harshened voice, and blackness fell across the sands.

—

The mirror broke to shards. Its times had run their course. They killed the silver dragon by the second way shown. Adalon did not die easily or cravenly, but she fell as any other of the ones they'd murdered.

—


	22. Impossible

_Warning_: Contains dragon hoard, less cruelty to minors than average, and consensual carnal matters.

—

Silver scales; red blood; and the mad mage's noises about roasting dragon heart and burning your thumb with three drops of fat to hear the tongues of birds and gain in wisdom. Montaron went around carefully and methodically exploring the lair, hunting down the pair of small dragonets that tried to bite him. Adalon's nest was made of what looked like elven silk spun into a cradle for her younglings, but the only treasure there was a large silver ring the creatures twirled around their snouts.

"Oh, what came from her eggs, Monty— Bad little dragon! Bad little dragon! I'll...er, take care of them—"

In stories of dragonslaying they never said how much the blood started to burn on you after a while. Adalon kept dragon-sized warm springs for herself to the back of her lair; he stopped searching for a moment and cleaned himself up as if he was Viconia. His and Xzar's transmutations still held on, though they should fade in short order after the dragon's death. He plucked a shard of mirror out of his upper arm and threw it in the water, skipping it six times before it sunk for good. No chance of rebuilding the thing, the mad mage said; just as well.

"It gives us fair warning to take precautions against those possibilities, some in particular," Viconia said haughtily, and he was roughly inclined to agree with her.

In the long lair were walls, passages, and a few spots that couldn't have been walked through by Adalon in her usual size, though they were still vast. Dragons shapechanged, they said. Check the depth of the walls and make sure it all added up; hunt for loose tiles or bits that seemed significantly more or less scuffed than the surrounding; think where the worm'd fit herself in most often. He levered a dagger into a white tile to check that one.

The mad mage flitted about with a pair of silver moths flying around his shoulders, brushing light dust on his skin where they touched him in their flutterings. "But we're no fit caretakers for transmuted young dragons, Monty. Better find a small glass aquarium and put it over their heads and leave them where the surface forest-singers can find them. Oh, and empty out all the water first. That would be a good idea. Would some dragons collect silver goldfish under glass? Once there was a dragon whose collection was gold and ruby and silver and emerald butterflies, rare ones too from Chult and Maztica, all stretched out on diamond-tipped pins below glass, wherein a maidenly prince rescued said dragon from a rogue princess... If I cook the dragon's heart, Monty, will you have some?"

"I don't eat anything that can talk back, freak," Montaron said.

"All the more for me." Xzar hummed his way back to where he was supposed to be stripping the body, the silver moths still floating around him.

The tile turned out to be none but normal. Had to be a hoard, or they'd have spilt their blood and sweat for nothing. Not a damned thing; but...the idea that they were good enough for bloody dragons to fall down and die facing them, perhaps. Besides, the scales were worth something.

The noble-good bloody likes of Adalon were the type to collect butterflies just to spite the ones who went to all the trouble of killing them, Montaron thought. Or maybe plants from rare elven forests of Toril, all lined up in a pretty blooming underground flower-garden full of utter uselessness and sweet scents. Or wine, perhaps, for dragons who put on the noble shine-my-claws polish-my-arse-scales airs. He marched around a set of lower caves, hunting through the rocks by another branch of the hot springs.

"In here, slave," Viconia called, the voice low and satisfied, and he chased after it. There was a cave that would've been the next part he'd looked into. It was long and low with a deep pit in the ground, the stone smoothed out like granite-finishings as if by ice or scale-scrapings. And in the pit was what had to be the dragon's hoard, silvery platinum coin and gold and silver, cut jewels in scarlet fire and azure and peacock green clashing together and clanking across each other, and rising out of it were Viconia's naked shoulders. She reached a bare arm for a crystal wineglass by the side of the pit, and drank dark red of some aged vintage from a dusty bottle nearby. She raised her slim neck in her bath of jewels, white hair loose and free behind her.

Montaron swallowed. "Ye've done me in at least two ways, woman."

She raised a smooth-skin leg slowly upward from the bath, gold and silver and diamond clinking from her skin. "Come and join me, if you will. Off with your clothes, male."

You never thought of it in advance when it came to the notion of swimming in wealth, but jewels and metals were cold and hard and sharp-edged. It was about six feet deep, Montaron reckoned, six wide in diameter; adding up to ransom fit for a king. No, he'd an idea Viconia wouldn't find that flattering. He pushed his way to her through the gemstones, treading beljuril underfoot and watching her rise like a siren above gold and jewels. She grabbed him by the hair.

"Wine?" Viconia said sweetly, sipping at her goblet with her right hand. He reached for her flesh. Alive, killed a gods-damned dragon, by Mask, about time for this—

She dragged him below the pile of gold, all but pulling his scalp free. His hands scrabbled along her thighs for purchase, where she sat comfortably enough on a ledge of smoothed rock. Her nails nested in his skin and her plans for the evening had been clear all along as she drew him into her lap.

Viconia arched her back and cried out, trying to take chunk of hair off him all the while, savage as always. She poured droplets of the wine between her breasts, cascading over her stomach and below to where she wanted him licking it up.

She fell back, claiming not to be tired; women endured. "Mm, slave. Enough for now." She toyed with gemstones. By her side above her glass lay overturned.

She was far warmer than the jewels; he idly left his hands on her. Four beljurils cascaded from her hand at once in a glittering waterfall. "And where to, after this?" she said, heavy-lidded.

"Deep gnomes'll want to come after us," Montaron reminded. No need to wipe out the village. Or if the surface-elves ever got wind...well, no reason to borrow trouble. No reason for any of the mirror to be true, in the end.

Viconia laughed as if she knew perfectly well it was a small matter. "Do you know, I think the mad mage draws closer to become a wizard of true power. And I a high priestess, of course."

"Well? And where would ye plan to go?" He patted a knee.

Viconia's hand snaked around his shoulders and caught his neck; he could have left it, but it was pleasant. Almost familiar. "Wherever we wish."

—

_Note_: A dragon with a butterfly collection is in Simon Green's Forest Kingdom series, by utter coincidence of course. ;)


	23. Hell Is Other People

_A/N:_ Thanks for reading. :) I still think Montaron's and Viconia's practical-evil personalities have a lot in common.

—

Amkethran was a burning red pimple in the midst of sands hot as the Nine Hells. Flee the army of Tethyrians, end up in this dried yellowing turd of a place; and run across garbage on the end of the Bhaalspawn Wars. They weren't s'posed to be here, but with merc's work it was always easy come, easy go. Halfway decent weaponry and enough to eat and ye'd almost call that frolicking in clover.

They trudged across for a patrol of the sands. Balthazar was a paranoid ranting fool with a surprise or two in his fist and a sense of honour like a fire-giant morningstar rooted where the sun didn't shine. Montaron didn't feel like taking on a fortress of monks, and for now the gold was flowing in. They walked Amkethran's borders and almost hoped for some trouble to come to relieve the boredom. Xzar stared into things that didn't exist.

"The Bhaalspawn Wars are their own story," he said, "and many are apart from it. The ward of Candlekeep, the mad monk, the traitor to sink a mace into his back. The time of the prophecy has come...for them."

"Shar awaits the outcome in her divine sphere," Viconia said. "No present candidate would be close to her, I think. Hold and listen."

Her eyes held a touch of the same pale that lurked in the mad mage. Montaron glared across the desert. You'd think bare plains were easy to watch but the heat smoking off the grounds distorted the air, and the sameness itself bothered you. He couldn't see anything in his sight. Tethyr's sun beat down punishing hot as ever.

No, there was motion at last that fetched the eye. Not just some flapping bird or escaping sheep. It was black, and it flew across the desert near to attacking. He'd drawn quickly, and then the blades were knocked from his wrists and a thin line drawn across his own neck with his own sword. If he'd not had the pennyworth of sense to duck—

"Mad mage!" It was a black blur that couldn't be other than mage-fast, and it was coming back for another round. Speed was good, skill was a touch too clear-as-crystal.

_Desert lands and dark shape and magery_.

Seen something like it before. He feinted as if he wanted to take back the sword it'd dropped on the sands, then threw himself in Viconia's direction. Black shape'd gone after the first caster acting, standard enough. He felt himself touching a cold shape below the black, humanoid and female. The woman threw him off with strength as unnatural as the speed, hands near as cold as a—

_Vampire_?

Xzar flung a glowing green whip through the air, tangling along the ground. It brought the woman's legs together and she fell back with her hood flung off her white face. She was human and young-looking, short and pale and dark-haired and crying out with pain for the sun on her face. Before, there'd been others—Montaron looked out for the landscape and aimed crossbow at a group of other figures passing over the desert.

"Haven't we—met before, my dear?" the mad mage said. He bent down and helped the bloodsucker thing tuck her hood back over herself.

"An undead creature. I can command the likes of you." Viconia raised a hand. The girl shook her head.

"Not quite," she said, and tried to spring forward to Viconia's throat. The five coming up from behind—a mage among them, robed, raising hands; three plate-armoured; a fifth shorter, less distinct.

_Hello, betrayers..._

"Tell 'em to stop," Montaron said, and turned one of the special bolts back to the girl. Moved like an arrow, strong as a bear, bright enough to see what he was threatening—and looking at her face he knew her the same as Xzar.

A bit paler than before, a brown scar from left ear to jugular, dark leathers that fit her like a glove. Mask help him if it weren't the Silvershield brat. All grown up, surprisingly effective in battle, and working toward shredding Xzar's spell on her ankles with her rapier.

"Look, kid, why don't we talk about this?" Montaron said. "Ye and us and...Benrulon, I'm guessing. Yonder Bhaalspawn waiting around."

"You robbed my father the last time we met, you lied about being with our group while working for Irenicus, and you're wanted for murder in Imnesvale," Skie Silvershield said, scowling, still the same high annoying voice that the Bhaalspawn brat and the fool young bard had somehow put up with, sniffing after her like pups. "And because you ruined the Umar temple they had to go below the sewers to try to get the lost temple of Amaunator to bring me back from being a vampire, and it just didn't _take_." She stood up, less cobra-fast than the last time, and took a stance with her sword like she'd learned to fight at last. "I'm about half a vampire. I keep telling myself that a lady has to watch what she eats."

She licked her lips, which were red on the pale face. Her teeth had always been on the white side. The five behind her were coming closer.

"Look, we can explain it," Montaron said. "Robbery ain't always a hanging crime, we didn't end up doing a lick of work for skin-mask, not least for he was about as creepy as ye are now, it weren't us, and we did exactly what the town mayor wanted."

"That is to say, jalil," Viconia said frostily, "that we knew we were blamed but...did not cause those particular corpses. Afterwards we collected some bounties and... Shall we kill this female and her little friends, or await her reasonable companions?"

"Hold and remove your threats from the person of the Lady Skie Silvershield," a man's voice said, "or by Helm, you malfeasants shall face the consequences!"

Montaron moved his head to his hands.

—

The two groups faced each other across the sands. Montaron waited warily. Benrulon stood well-armed by the front, in light brown leathers for the desert heat. The overmuscled knight with the Helmite symbol on the breastplate didn't seem to have taken the hint and wore his hair soaked flat with sweat, nor the Tyrran next to him with long fair hair behind her bare head. The Thayvian wanker tried to look as important as possible as he'd done before with his fat nose in the air, and held a staff in pale ash that carried elaborate metallic patterns drawn on it. Always kept the staff well-polished, heh. Last figure in line like as not didn't realise it was hot, for he'd gold-glowing eyes and walked with a weirdling air that had Viconia muttering to herself a few sentences in trying to figure it. The Silvershield girl raced with inhuman gait back to the boy's side.

"Monkeys. Three overgrown monkeys and that brainless little twit finding herself in trouble yet again," a Thayvian accent spoke from deep up inside the nose.

"Look, Monty," Xzar whispered, "he's carrying that staff the vampire Tanova took from me."

"(Correction: one overgrown monkey, one undergrown monkey, and the attractive drow concubine. If I tell her it is the workings of Fate we meet again she may believe me.)" The Red Wizard smoothed down his beard.

"Will this take long before we pursue Balthazar? I have a honeymoon too long put off." The lady knight raised an armoured finger glittering with an oversized emerald. It was gaudy enough for a magpie's deepest fantasies and a matched shade to her green eyes.

"Lady Irlana, I have no doubt of Benrulon's goals shortly becoming accomplished and your reunion with your beloved Cyrando imminent," the Helmite said.

"These people are Zhentarim, yes?' said the last figure with the glowing eyes. "My spies informed me you had palled up with members of the Zhentarim, the last time. These seem low specimens, _brother_."

No way tall, dark, and gold-glowing was sibling on the right side of the blanket for the half-hin Bhaalspawn brat.

"Oh, they are," Benrulon said. "Y'know, metaphorically, since after all I'm a touch on the short side myself. And besides the Imnesvale murders they're wanted for banditry in Balearis, theft in Talimpset, fraud in Pherasta, poisoning the water supply in Ferrismay, murder in Anactoria, dubbering in Dahlisme, public loitering with intent in Ravilliar, blackmailing a prelate of paladins in Berevis, numping in Ultis Thulan, witch-burning in Vittoria, inappropriate use of a garderobe in Gekania, failure to observe elven immigration customs in Celand, kitten-killing in Hatchesput, graverobbing in Wendsant, necromancy in Lathule, kidnapping in Vergano, usage of unsanctioned magical energy on a live sheep in Sevilla, libbaging in Lothirian, sutlering in Sarabone, excessive ergotting in Earielen, and impersonating members of Tormtar clergy in Perasvale."

That'd been a good one.

"So our speech," Irlana said, "ought to be something along the lines of _vile criminals, we now prepare you to face holy justice_?" The Helmite drew his warhammer beside her.

"I wouldn't be overhasty when it comes to the drow," the Thayvian said, now buffing his nails on his slightly stained mage's robe. "She's probably their innocent dupe. (Besides, she made certain...implied...promises to me back in Nashkel.)"

"Oh, wizard. Once again you talk and talk and blow hot wind through the air. Alas, I am in no more mood for your nasal drone than the desert mosquitoes whose buzzing it so resembles," Viconia said. Her eyes turned to the big one. "Now who is the tall strong man of your group?"

"Ben, sweetie, they do work for your other brother, don't they?" Skie Silvershield kissed the top of her boyfriend's head.

"Melissan was right. Balthazar's another noble-intentioned idiot who's fallen into their sort and probably worse," the Bhaalspawn said.

"I am the Sarevok Anchev who threw the blame upon you for the iron crisis, Zhentarim," the big armoured man said, and Montaron recognised the name. Anchev of the Iron Throne, who'd tried to set Amn and the Gate at each other's throats. Anchev, who'd also been dead nigh two years now. Shame some things just didn't take.

"A raised Bhalspawn! And so...well-muscled, despite his unnatural rebirth," Viconia said.

"Yeah, the arse who thought it'd be jolly good fun to frame us and start his little war," Montaron said. "And ye have him and the likes of the Thayvian in your team? Righteous work there, kiddo."

"People can be redeemed," the Helmite said, and the uptight green-eyed Tyrran gave it a nod.

"Even the likes of Edwin," she said, looking down her long nose at him, a few inches taller than the wizard beside her.

"(When the paladin monkey abandons her short husband to ask for Edwin Odesseiron's mastery of the erotic I will have the great satisfaction of telling her I told her so. And then turn her down. Obviously. No matter how few other opportunities...)" The Helmite stared strangely at him.

"Hedgewizard," Xzar said loudly. "Hedgewizard conjurer with nary a trace of foresight."

The Red Wizard drew himself up. "You dare, you graverobbing bootlicking corpsesmelling ateles-limbed simian? Edwin Odessiron has more power in the smallest bone of his left little finger—which no doubt you would like to steal and use in some hopelessly malfunctioning spell! (Or possibly just pick his blackening teeth with it.)"

"I am curious of you, Sarevok Anchev," Viconia said. "Your...nature; your height and strength; rare is it that I am so reminded of the most expensive pleasure slaves."

"I am from the grave," he answered. She turned to the Helmite.

"A pitiful priest of a foolish surface deity, are we?"

"Test my strength and find out, Sharran," the knight said. The hammer he carried looked serious enough; ye could outspeed the overmuscled lout type and slice through the joints in the armour, but with godcrawling power ye had to take care.

"Been a while since ye stumbled through the Candlekeep woods on the way to Nashkel, hasn't it, kid?" Montaron said. "Two lost ones who needed a sip of our potions. Nice to know there's gratitude these days."

Benrulon folded his arms. "Yes, yes, and you helped Skie and me learn to pick locks and slip behind people's backs. Doesn't make you not evil."

"If we kill them, I promise not to eat them, honey," the Silvershield brat said, wrapping a black-leathered arm around his shoulders. "Even a little bit."

"Let us smite the Sharran and the Zhentarim, and smash down Balthazar's gates. Time runs out," the Helmite said. For all the weight it looked to carry, the hammer rushed very easily through the air.

"Look," Montaron said, "mebbe we could talk some more about it?"

"Pufferfish bloated buffoon of carnival-conjuration-tricks!" Xzar shrieked at the Red Wizard.

"Congenitally moronic babbler of entrail-eating!" Edwin Odesseiron yelled back, brandishing that staff.

"Pimple on the bottom of an enlarged dissected thyroid gland!"

"Lemur-faced lapine-fancying corpse-lover!"

"Raging-red choker-cheating tiara-twiddling dilettante!"

"—I am _not_ wearing a tiara, infantile nail-eater!"

Xzar hid his right hand behind his back. "I challenge you to a wizard duel upon the keys to Balthazar's fortress, postdigested cream cheese!"

"I accept, rotting stick of moulding bones!"

Montaron glanced up at the woman beside him. "A clerical duel would be less to my liking...though the Helmite does have almost the same large human muscles if the duel were of a different sort," Viconia said.

And the Silvershield brat was half-bloodsucker, and Benrulon could turn into a vast red avatar of Bhaal at will. "Yeah, put him on it," Montaron said, ignoring the last words from Viconia. "Hey, Bhaalspawn! Balthazar's got folk of his own on castings for his shield, and we'll stake letting ye in on the mageduel. No sense in killing each other now when ye'd rather be fresh for the mad monk, right?"

Six on three, and they all knew it; but he'd wager that they could've taken out at least one of the noble companions in a straight fight. The Tyrran noted it too.

"Keep your word," she said. "I mislike that you are so willing to turn coat to your master Balthazar."

"Yep, lady, we've noticed that the monk's gone crazier than a bag full of Carronian eels—or come to think of it than the necromancer," Montaron said, leaning up to stare at the lady knight's face, not that her figure below the plate mail wouldn't have been impressive. "It be a case of damned-to-the-Nine-Hells if'n we do, damned-to-the-Nine-Hells if we don't, ain't it?"

"Take your preaching elsewhere, female," Viconia said to her. She drew a waterskin from her pack. "In the Underdark mageduels are held over a vast black pit, with both casters to maintain levitation spells and disrupt those of their opponent as part of the test. If the fight took longer than half an hour's passing or failed to be entertaining both combatants were fed to spiders. What are the rules here to be, rivvil?"

"Only the standard rules of all supreme mages," the Thayvian said. "The encasing spell: mageduel, a sheltering bubble so that my immensely powerful magics shall not leak and cause damage to civilian worms. (Not that I would care, but tradition demands and it would be a shame to destroy the drow's face with a misplaced fireball.) The wizards demonstrate their spells against each other and the duel ends when one is defeated—or deceased. (Then the necromancer can join the sort of women closer to his tastes.)"

"Of course, the mageduel spell!" Xzar said. "Such a terribly simple casting, isn't it? But can you do it, conjurer?"

"I can and I shall, insolent coffin-turner! (Merely grant me a moment or two of study and preparation.)" the Red Wizard answered.

"Oh, yes, very well," the necromancer said. "Two hours' preparation ought to return us both our primary spells, shouldn't it?"

"(The village idiot missing a village must need it.) Oh, yes. The spells I invoke to kill vast numbers of simian opponents are not the spells that demonstrate a mage's power most finely in order to lesson other mages in their basic cantrips."

They sat around in the shadow of a sand dune with the wizards studying their books on opposite sides. Viconia and Xzar had exchanged a few words; then she took a long drink from her waterskin, deliberately letting drops escape and run down her body. The Helmite stared at her.

"Would you like a drink, male?" she asked innocently. "For we have plenty of water ourselves."

Montaron took a sip of his own full skin and offered it to the Bhaalspawn. "Ye'd be running out in desert crossings? Good ye ran into us. Balthazar's got a large-sized guard set on his wells, and even the folk of the temple can't convince him to share it out to the commoners."

"That matches our rumours," Benrulon said, watching him carefully. Then the boy took a swig of water himself. The Silvershield girl drank from a skin of her own that smelt like blood—and chances were high was. It left dark red traces around her lips. "Thanks. We were running very short." He handed it to Anchev next. "You're not immortal, brother. Drink while you can."

"Hmph. Thank you, drow," the Helmite said, trying not to look at her chest and failing. "I am Sir Anomen of the Order of the Radiant Heart; what do you know of Helm?"

"Very little," Viconia said slowly, reeling him in.

"Helm, then, is a just and upright god. His followers are taught to be vigilant and never to betray their trust, and always to keep their armour in excellent condition." The knightling slapped his chest like a giant ape. "Fairness, diligence, and carefulness are Helm's watchwords. We priests guard all those in need of guarding, and shepherd to the flock those lost lambs who have gone astray. I..." he carried on.

"I'm bored now," Viconia announced. She yawned, and smiled at the expression on the knight's face. "You must be very good at sending females to sleep." She pushed him back. "My lady Shar would not approve."

The mages neared their time.

"I'll conjure fiends from the Nine Hells themselves to feast upon you for a light snack! (Demogorgon, for instance, perfectly obedient to my will.)" The Thayvian let a series of theatrical lightning bolts roll up and down his heavy robes.

"Yes, I'm sure," Xzar said, "with your fancy trinkets."

"As if I could not defeat you just the same without."

"What does that long staff do, jaluk?" Viconia said, draping herself by the Thayvian. More fool he, he answered.

"(I see you monkeys held no understanding of it while it was momentarily in your possession—if indeed you do not lie about that.) It creates me powerful protections from spellwork; likewise shields me utterly from the hungry demons I order to fetch my slippers and order into menial tasks; and it allows me fireballs and lightning bolts stored within its wood."

"A noble instrument," she said, and turned around to chant a spell over the mad wizard. "It would only be balanced to protect him against fire and lightning, then, wouldn't it, male?"

"Cheating. (Cheating simians.) Helmite-monkey! Do the same for me."

Anomen shook his head. "It appears fair enough to me, Red Wizard. You have boasted of the length of your staff all too often. Possibly for reasons of compensatory exaggeration."

Edwin glared. "Some wittier mind than you originated that line, didn't they?"

"I'll throw away some of my finer entrailed memoirs and devices," Xzar offered.

"(Oh, it is only a dispellation away from blasting the fool into the Abyss.) _Fair enough_. What chance could an entrail-reader face against me? Now stand back for Edwin Odesseiron's expert casting of the wizard's duel."

The Red Wizard knew his job, that couldn't be doubted. The mageduel bubble he cast was a glassy red, easy to see through; it floored the sands of the desert and raised a rounded roof over the wizards' heads. They raised their hands to begin.

_See if the mad wizard can prove himself._

Spell protections, simulacrum-dummy, and forest of images for the Red Wizard first. Xzar did less that could be seen, but a rune glowing white appeared above the mad mage's head like a giant eye. Then a vial of green paint appeared out of thin air and dumped itself on the robes of one of the Edwins dancing in the sphere.

"—_Simian_! My best robes! You shall pay for that (oh yes, he shall—)"

"His only robes, for now," Lady Irlana said. "They do carry quite an odour after long marching."

The painted Edwin and another cast different spells at the mad mage, the white whiplike currents for one spell-fiddler making another vulnerable to the things they did. Xzar stood there waiting, the eye rune unblinking above his head.

"Stunned already, simian? You will be more than stunned come—"

It was the head of a great red dragon above Odesseiron. And it spilled clouds of flame that shook the bubble like an earthquake, and even the ground outside. The sand shifted and Montaron hardly kept his footing. Viconia grabbed his shoulder to stay standing herself.

—_Roasted mad-mage, it seems—too bad—_

The flames disappeared in the same instant as the dragon's head. Xzar stood up, robes torn and a burn or two marked on his face, scraping what looked like ice crystals off his skin.

"—Thoughtyouweregoingtodothat," Xzar mumbled.

Always at the last minute, blasted madman. Xzar pointed waveringly into the air and a creature made of what seemed like smoke emerged. All but two of the Red Wizard were gone in the wake of his own flames, and the second Edwin called five hefty ogres into the bubble. The smoke grabbed and touched the green-painted Thayvian, who cried out.

"Steal my magic, imbecile? I have plenty more!"

"But not that one again," Xzar said. "Taste the most powerful one I troubled to prepare!"

The mad wizard gathered up a banshee's ghost behind him, long pale hair streaming out from a corpse's face, and the thing let out a long wail. The ogres collapsed and died; the second Red Wizard knelt down bleeding from the ears. Nasty one, that were, and Xzar's eyes glowed white—

"Pathetic," Odesseiron replied, and took a ten-foot woman in blue and gold from the air. "You are bound to my will, planetar: remove the hissing hakeashar and spit the vile necromancer." The golden sword cut through the wraith quickly, then the giant woman turned on Xzar.

"Protection-from-positive-planes!" the mad mage shrieked, his skin turning blue-red as if he was casting a ghoul's spell. The Thayvian's woman stared as if she couldn't see him, then started to glare suspiciously at her summoner.

"(If you want something done, always do it oneself.)" Odesseiron raised a hand for a simple spell, a mage's missiles. Twenty of the things, at least, unleashed in one barrage against Xzar. A shield sprung up against the mad wizard and fell away at the same moment the torrent ended. The Red Wizard dropped his hand.

"My last missiles—spell should not have lasted so precisely—tell me how, necromancer!" He dismissed his woman with a wave of his hands before she could stab the duplicate. "Your counterspells the very instant before I act!"

Xzar bowed, tattered robes swirling around him in the wizard's bubble. "Illusions and deceptions are the one thing I cannot do. Divinations are yours. I've consulted my familiar all along for what you would do." From his pockets he produced a dried skull from the desert and moved it with his hands like a puppet. "Hello, Mister Raven Skull! What is the greatest likelihood of Edwin Odesseiron's next conjuration?"

A simple spell smashed the skull to fragments and the Red Wizard took a moment to gloat. Xzar finished another casting: a field of spiralling purple bolts sprouted below Odesseiron's feet. The other Edwin turned into a small purple lizard; and then the first cursed, and powered his staff into a torrent of the lightning and fires he'd boasted about. A hail of blue bolts ricocheted from the bubble's walls, fires and smoke covering everything. Then Odesseiron changed the staff from one hand to the other and disappeared from sight.

Xzar dusted the remains of another protection spell from his skin. "Edwin? I can _see_ you..." The creepy white diviner's glow lurked in the mad wizard's eyes. He threw a quick orb at something in the air, and the Red Wizard reappeared. The Thayvian drew a pentagram by his feet and threw brimstone across it. Demon-summoning, that'd be; but another spell from Xzar managed to interrupt that one.

"(Know that I _can_ summon demons at my will. It beats oracles eyeballing entrails any day.)" Three swords rushed out of thin air at Odesseiron snapping his fingers, headed for the mad wizard.

"I like your swords—in stone!" Xzar cackled. Two of them gained quick weight with the point of them in stone bricks; and then the lizard bit a chunk out of the mad mage's ankle to disrupt his spell. Odesseiron laughed and began a longer casting.

It was a crushing fist that opened giant fingers to grasp the mad mage. "Bigby's—divined that one—" the mad mage gasped out, and then the third sword was caught in the grip in place of him. The fingers squeezed and bent the dweomer-metal apart in a single clang. Xzar rolled to the ground and got up with bleeding hands. "What familiar?"

"Liar. (A skull is _not_ allowed to be a familiar!)" Odesseiron aimed another spell, and it took away something of that mad divination glowing white in Xzar's eyes. "Can't tell now what I'm about to do, can you, fool? The duel ends, I've far more power—" The purple field still bubbling below his feet sent up a current to his body this time. He shrieked, and then brought a lock of his hair to his face. It had turned orange. Montaron groaned. The Thayvian swayed on his feet, unharmed, preparing another spell.

An orb flew across and hit him in the face, bursting into light and nothing else. "(Pathetic.)" Odesseiron raised the staff and chanted. Fire jetted from his hands and scorched the mad mage's right shoulder black. "(I can taste my victory.)"

A second orb flew from the mad mage's left hand, and Odesseiron raised a hand to bat it away. It exploded; and then he didn't move at all. The mad wizard walked slowly over to him, and pushed him down with a touch of a finger. The mage's barrier melted around them as if one of the crazy wizards had won at last.

—

"We did not swear to abandon our travel to Balthazar," Sarevok Anchev said, throwing his weight around.

"We bet the gate to Balthazar's fortress," Montaron said, "but we didn't say which wizard we bet on."

"(The one with more power and talent and sanity, I hope.)" Delryn pressed a compress of cold cloth to Odesseiron's forehead. Xzar picked up a new skull from his robes and carried on a conversation as one-sided as it was garbled.

"Head this way, Spawn," Montaron invited.

Balthazar's gates were all heavy admantite at the end of a long rocky, slippery and close-sealed with thick bars and spells aplenty. He seemed to think it built character or somesuch to make the novices walk and stumble a long way up to the fortress entrance. In the dusk of the desert Montaron slipped in the key given him, and ushered the Bhaalspawn and his group up the sandy path to the second door. The gates closed neatly behind them and resealed themselves as if to hide that they'd snuck through.

At the end of it Balthazar himself turned up at the gates.

"Brother Benrulon," he greeted, and stared at the group of them. "Well done, mercenaries, delivering the Bhaalspawn as I ordered. I assume you administered the drug as well."

"The water—" Lady Irlana placed a hand to her throat.

"Betrayers," Benrulon accused, and the yellow sands below their feet shifted in the winds of the evening.

"Did we now?" Montaron said. The Bhaalspawn's people regrouped. The Helmite cast a spell from the heavens—the Silvershield brat aimed a bow—the Bhaalspawn drew blades and went forward with Anchev and Irlana—and the Red Wizard sneered at the new enemy.

"Then I'll deal with the traitors later," Balthazar said, iron-faced and stiff-rumped and never a man to cross at the best of times. _Betrayed a different one to the demon mirror's vision..._

"Brother: come and be cleansed of your taint. Acolytes, come to me..."

The three of them stood back at the foot of the rough staircase, below the sounds of battle for Bhaal's throne. Montaron opened his palm to show Lady Irlana's wedding ring; and flipped the giant emerald up to land beyond the parapets, where the paladin might claim it later if she wished.

"Little man," Viconia said, resting a soft hand on his shoulders, "you do know where Balthazar keeps the chests of funds he uses to hire the likes of us, don't you?"

Montaron drew out another key from his jerkin. "Reckon we've half an hour to nick the loot and get out of here before the Bhaalspawn fireworks really start. Beljurils for your toes, necromantic fodder for the mage, off on the road again—"

Xzar clapped his hands. "It's been such _fun_."

—

_the end_

—


End file.
